Purse fishing boats in Quynh Luu are 'hungry' for labor.

Fisherman Vu Xuan Trong, Minh Thanh village, Quynh Long commune, is using a 450CV purse seine fishing boat. He shared: Purse seine fishing is very effective. In the first 9 months of 2017, each trip lasting no more than 10 days, his boat also caught dozens of tons of fish of all kinds. After deducting expenses, each worker earned 8-10 million VND/person/trip. However, in the last 3 months of the year, due to the impact of storms and continuous cold air, the output decreased, prices did not increase, and the trips back and forth only covered the cost of fuel.

Purse net is one of the key fishing occupations of Quynh Luu fishermen. Photo: Thanh Toan

Purse seine is a profession that requires large initial investment capital and is also subject to high risks due to a number of factors such as large fishing grounds, far from shore, harsh weather conditions, and unstable productivity, which have increased production costs and reduced product quality, resulting in many vessels being ineffective.

The fleets are using the side-seine technique, which has little mechanization in production, so they have to use a lot of labor, have long fishing times, and ensure safety in production is not high...

Currently, each purse seine fishing vessel needs an average of 15-19 workers. Recently, due to low fishing efficiency, many workers have switched to other occupations. For example, in Quynh Long commune, about 1/3 of the total number of vessels are currently short of workers.

Quynh Long fishermen are checking and repairing their purse seine nets before going out to sea. Photo: Thanh Toan

Fisherman Nguyen Van Minh, a fishing boat owner with more than 30 years of experience in the seafaring profession in Dai Hai village, Quynh Long commune, shared: When the harvest is good, it is easy to mobilize labor to stabilize production, but when the harvest is bad like now, there is no labor, many boats are lying on shore and are at risk of having to change jobs.

To solve the problem of labor shortage, fisherman Nguyen Van Minh and many other fishermen in Quynh Long commune have focused on mechanizing production, installing some equipment such as a winch system to pull the rope into the hold, installing a winch to winch the buoy, moving the net to the end to reduce labor, and reducing the number of people winching the net.

“By installing additional equipment and moving the net to the end, we can reduce the number of workers by 3. For example, before, we needed 14-15 workers to have enough people to go, but now, after restructuring and installing additional equipment, only 11-12 people can go to work,” added fisherman Nguyen Van Minh.

Mr. Bui Xuan Truc - Deputy Head of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Quynh Luu district said: In order for this profession to develop sustainably and bring income to localities, along with training to improve the quality of seafarers, the district is also directing communes to restructure their professions appropriately and encourage fishermen to change their professions, register to expand fishing grounds to the Truong Sa area to catch more fish with higher economic value, and at the same time reduce the pressure on exploitation in the Gulf of Tonkin.