HCMC – Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province will establish three inter-disciplinary checkpoints to fight against IUU fishing at the sea gates of Sao Mai, Loc An and Binh Chau, authorized to inspect fishing boats, sailors and fishing licenses.

The Ba Ria-Vung Tau People’s Committee has decided to set up three inter-disciplinary checkpoints to fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing during the peak fishing season in the provincial area this year, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

Checkpoint No. 1 will be established at the Sao Mai sea gate, Vung Tau City, checkpoint No. 2 at the Loc An sea gate, Dat Do District, and checkpoint No. 3 at the Binh Chau sea gate, Xuyen Moc District.

These checkpoints will stop incoming and outgoing fishing boats in the area of Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province to inspect documents relating to sailors, fishing boats, registration numbers of fishing boats, equipment installed on the fishing boats and the fishing boat’s port records.

On March 3 the provincial People’s Committee issued an action plan to fight against IUU fishing activities. According to this, the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development would coordinate with other relevant departments to complete registration, inspection, granting permits and installation of vessel monitoring systems (VMS) for all the fishing boats in the provincial area.

Statistics of the Ba Ria-Vung Tau Department of Agriculture and Rural Development showed that till now, there had been around 2,631 fishing boats with a height of 15 meters installed with the VMS, accounting for 95% of the total, while the remaining 5% of fishing boats were inactive.