Harmful Fishing Hurts the Mekong, Livelihoods

When the floodwaters in Vietnam’s southern Dong Thap Muoi region start to recede in late November and early December, it is a sign that the busiest time for fishing communities will follow shortly.

After all, this is the season when fish -- which had earlier migrated from the Great Lake here to the floodplains -- make their way into the Mekong River (the Tien Giang and Hau Giang rivers in Vietnam) to spawn.

It’s the busiest time for fishing activities in the whole flood season, as evidenced by the number of boats in the water.

But in the race to get better catches, fishers do not always use legal, or the most environment-friendly, methods. Many of the methods are, in fact, forbidden in the Dong Thap Muoi region, including the use of weirs, trawls and nets with electric shock to stun the fish in order to catch them. The use of gear with electric shocks is among the most damaging – apart from harming fish spawning areas, it destroys fingerlings as well.

After much difficulty, I persuaded a local fisher, who wanted to be called Nguyen Th., to let me join him as he went out on the water one night. He is well known in the Tam Nong district of Dong Thap province for using nets fit with electric shock gear.

At 5 p.m., Th. picked me up at Tram Chim town in the district. His 80-horsepower boat surfed the waves, heading for the river in a suburban area of Tram Chim. After his three assistants finished cleaning and arranging fish storage compartments and laying out the net, Th. started the boat’s engines as well as the electric generator.

He briefly explained the way he fishes. The net he uses, he said, has electric wires connected to a piece of steel at its mouth. The electricity stuns and paralyses fish, which are then rounded up into the net. The net is heavy and drags along the riverbed to a depth of about two metres, so he had to install four engines (of 20 horsepower each) to get the net moving in the waters at a speed of about eight to 10 kilometres an hour.

At 6 p.m., Th. started using his fishing gear. Thirty minutes later, one of his assistants, Hau, pulled in the net. The first haul produced more than five kilogrammes of assorted fish and shrimp, so small they were just as wide as a finger.

After pouring this catch into a big container, Hau cast the net out again. Hung and Thong, the other two assistants, sat down to sort the first catch into different containers. Then, the group pulled the net in every 30 minutes. By the third haul, it had caught a total of 10 to 15 kilos of fish.

SUDDEN CALL IN THE NIGHT

At 8 p.m., Th.’s cellphone suddenly rang. He cursed as soon as he hung up -- the fisheries protection team was out conducting inspections. “F*** them! The protection force is on patrol tonight,” Th. said. “The call was from one of the men I have inside the force, who alert me about any inspections.”

Shortly after the phone call, the six to seven fishing boats in the area where Th. had been fishing started to disperse after being tipped off by their own inside contacts. Only Th. stayed. “They are checking many other places and by the time they get here, it will be midnight. Since I’ve already paid for the oil and gas to get here, I should stay on to fish,” he said.

“Do boat owners have to pay their informants?” I asked.

“No. They are all (their) relatives. Sometimes, we just invite them for a drink and a cup of wine,” he replied.

“Do the inspectors check regularly?”

“Not really. They conduct checks several times throughout the flood season. The floodplains are so large, how can they check everywhere?” Th. said. Even if they come to inspect, he said, officials confiscate the fishermen’s generators (which cost about 3 million dong each), issue a fine of five million dong (297 U.S. dollars) and return the boats. “Two to three days later, we go to the middlemen and ‘buy’ back our confiscated generators,” he said, describing a cycle where the use of illegal fishing methods thus continues.

Meantime, Th. lit up the waterway ahead to keep the boat from hitting bushes floating in the water. He urged me to help sort the catch he had made. There were more than 10 types of fish, ranging from large catfish, loaches and climbing perch, as well as field shrimps and river crabs. There were also well-known fish known locally as “sea-hogs” and “sea-horses” – the former so named because of its fatty skin, and the latter for its ability to leap out of the water.

Th. picked up a “sea-horse” to show to me. “This one when fully grown can weigh up to five kilos, and be worth 60,000 to 70,000 dong a kilo. One day, when I caught one, I raised it in a cage. It jumped over a net of 2.5 metres and nearly escaped.”

He then put the glittering blue “sea-hogs”, which were the size of two fingers, into a separate container. “This is not the type of sweet water porpoise that is enlisted in the Red List (of the World Conservation Union or IUCN). It is a fish that lives only in the Dong Thap Muoi region. A big one can weigh a kilogramme. The meat is fat like pork, that’s why we call it ‘sea-hog’,” said Th.

Pointing to a catfish, Th. continued: “This one, fully grown, can weigh at least five or six kilos. In the last few years of rake netting, I’ve caught dozens of kilos of adult fish, but I haven’t caught any that are more 300 grammes so far this whole flood season.”

Trying not to provoke him, I said: “Fishermen like you are catching small fish. So how can (they can grow to be) big ones?”

But Th. wasn’t insulted, and replied: “If I don’t catch them, others will do it, and they’ll do it more brutally.”

At 11 p.m., it started to rain, and water poured into the boat. We quickly put on raincoats, but still felt very cold. “Let’s go home,” Th. said. “We should also go back early, otherwise the informant will scold us for ignoring his alert to hide from the inspection unit. Brothers will feel uncomfortable seeing each other. ”

Surveying the fish in the containers, the fishermen estimated there could be three to four hundred kilos. “Enough to pay for oil, brother!”

At 5 a.m. the next morning, I followed Th. to the fish market in Tram Chim town.

Th. had caught about 200 kilos of fish, including more than 10 kilos of climbing perch and five kilos of loaches and shrimps, which he sold for about 15,000 to 20,000 dong per kilo. The remaining 185 kilos of small fish were sold at a very low price of about 3,500 dong per kilo.

In total, Th. earned one million dong. Deducting money to pay for oil, engines and his helpers, Th. pocketed more than 500,000 dong for the night’s work.

But during this season, for a short period of five to seven days as fish swarm to the Mekong River, he is able to catch up to two or three tonnes of fish a night. After expenses and overheads, this puts five to seven million dong in his pocket.

Sorting Catch

Le Minh Triet, the deputy chief of Dong Thap province’s fisheries protection department, said that boats using electric shock nets are out on the water throughout the year. During the flood season, those boats crisscross the region, operating between provinces in the south from An Giang and Dong Thap, to Long An and Kien Giang.

Seizing these boats is very difficult, and requires the responsible government agencies to have properly equipped forces. In 2006, the Dong Thap Provincial People’s Committee handed over the fisheries inspection task to the provincial Agriculture and Rural Development Department. Under this set-up, the fisheries protection department only gives inputs to the Provincial People’s Committee when the committee requires such.

IN THE TONLE SAP

Like their Vietnamese counterparts, Cambodian fishermen further up the Mekong River use weir nets and drag nets at estuary canals, and fishing nets in fields. These methods are as destructive to adult and juvenile fish as the use of electric nets.

From Dong Thap, in the rain, I hired a motorbike and its driver, to travel to Chau Doc town in southern An Giang province, then waited for a boat to go up into Cambodia.

The boat travelled past Tra and Basa catfish-rearing cages lying next to one another in Tan Chau and Hong Ngu, both border districts of Dong Thap province located some 20 km to the river border crossing between Vinh Xuong in Vietnam, and Kaam Samnor in Cambodia. It then continued on to the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

In Phnom Penh, the Mekong River divides into four branches: one flows into the Tonle Sap (Great Lake), the Tonle Bassac (which runs into Vietnam and is called the Hau River there), and the upper Mekong and lower Mekong running through Tan Chau and Hong Ngu (called the Tien River in Vietnam.)

My search for fish sellers started at the Phsar Kandal night market, lit by smokey candelight, in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

A couple, Rua Mooc and her husband Svay Xamon, from Cambodia’s Leuk Daek district in southern Kandal province, said that they catch between 500 kilos and a tonne of fish daily during this season.

“We have three big nets, each covering the water currents of the fields near our house. Those nets enable us to catch all types of fish,” said Svay Xamon. “I sell small fish to wholesale buyers from Vietnam, who buy them to feed their black snakehead fish. The big ones are sold in Phnom Penh for better prices. Our income totally depends on this season where fish leave the fields.”

“What brings you more money? This way of catching fish or using nets that stun the fish with electric currents?” I asked.

“You earn more using electric shock nets, but we would be pursued by the police. No one dares to,” came the reply.

Rua Mooc, Xamon’s wife, lamented the declining fish catch over the years. “About three to five years ago, you could catch a lot of fish, and mostly big ones. Now it takes from dawn till dark just to get half the amount,” she said.

Going to Rua Mooc’s home village of Piem Cho in Leuk Daek, we were able to see their nets firsthand, including the weir nets that covered parts of the water around their home and an estuary canal. The fishing method they use is not as effective as the ones that are pulled in, Rua Mooc said, where a big net spans the canal. Two lead bars weighing 30 kilos each hold down the bottom end of the net on the riverbed, making it possible to drag it with its catch inside. Pulling the net needs two 15 to 20 horsepower boats, with seven to eight fishermen. Like weir nets, this type of fishing prevents fish from escaping into the currents, and onto to the main river.

“Each time you pull in the net, you get forty to fifty kilos of fish. This net spares nothing, including small fish that other kinds of nets miss,” said Rua Mooc.

Looking at the nets arranged across the water like soldiers on a battlefield, I understood Mooc’s lament. Each season, weir nets and nets fit with electric shock gear destroy both adult fish and fish fry. How can they survive and multiply in these conditions?

DANGER SIGNALS

Anders Poulsen, a fisheries expert who has studied fish in the Mekong River for a decade, said that each year, the river provides about three million tonnes of fish, of which 2.5 million tonnes are naturally grown and 500,000 tonnes are raised. Fishermen in the Great Lake or Tonle Sap exploit about 400,000 tonnes a year in the Mekong River, whose subsidiaries run through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. But these nations have yet to establish cooperation to assess the total amount of fish caught every year, or declines in catch. However, through his studies in the Great Lake in Cambodia -- the Mekong’s biggest fish basket -- Poulsen has observed obvious signs of destruction of the fish environment, not only in terms of output, but also in the disappearance of species.

I took the same river route that Poulsen used when he was working for the Cambodian Mekong Committee three to four years ago, doing research into the migration of fish into and out of the Great Lake. This route leads from Phnom Penh upstream along the Tonle Sap River into the Great Lake, and then onto Siem Reap in north-west Cambodia.

In the middle of this journey, I dropped by Prek Toan village in the district of Ek Phnom in north-west Battambang province. Vietnamese have lived in this village for 30 years.

“In 1982, my wife and I decided to stay here because of the abundance of fish and an easy life,” said Tran Hoang Minh, who is from Vietnam’s Kien Giang province and as a soldier fought against the Khmer Rouge in early 1979.

“In recent years, the amount of fish has diminished so much that it takes us a whole day to catch them, but it’s not enough to pay for oil,” he said. “Fish swim from the river into the Great Lake during the dry season, and leave the lake for the river and the rich plains downstream during the high water season. Now, both the inflow and outflow amounts of fish have decreased.”

As proof, Minh cast out a net and pulled it up after 10 to 15 minutes. The net was light and empty, with just few little fish inside. “This amount is one-fifth of what it was five years ago,” Minh rued.

Unable to make a living by catching fish, local fishermen have had to get high-interest loans to build cages to rear fish instead. Though the loans of one to two million riel (242 to 484 dollars) are not large, many families have not been able to pay them off.

Looking at the shelters of the Vietnamese fishermen, I could not help but remember the words of Phan Tu, another village resident: “Less fish means hunger, and with this situation, people will be hungry very soon.”

Poulsen expressed concern not only about different kinds of harmful fishing methods and weir netting, but other factors that hurt the environment and reduce fish catch. These include the destruction of fish habitats, the construction of water reservoirs and hydroelectric power plants, and the narrowing of water channels to lead fish into traps.

Pointing at a map showing the small Cambodian town of Kratie along the mainstream Mekong River, Poulsen said: “It seems the Cambodian government is planning to build a hydropower plant here. This area has many low-lying grounds even after the floodwaters recede, and is a habitat for quite a few special types of fish in the Mekong, including Tra (catfish), porpoise and the giant catfish,” he said.

The giant Mekong catfish, one of the largest freshwater fish in the world and which can weigh up to 300 kilos, is not only identified with the Mekong region but has economic as well as cultural value. At the junction of the Lao, Thai and Myanmar border at the Mekong River, villagers hold a festival dedicated to this fish, which has rarely been caught in recent years. “If the hydropower plant is built here, the deep water area for the fish and the water flow for it to swim downstream into the Great Lake will be blocked,” Poulsen explained.

‘FLOATING’ LIVES

Catching fish with just two hands and a small net never “wins” over the use of electric shock and other methods used by more well-off fishermen.

According to the Vientiane-based Mekong River Commission, the Mekong River is still “clean” and plays an important role in South-east Asia’s economy. Up to 80 percent of the 55 million people living in the downstream portion of the Mekong River depend on its fish for food, and earn income from fishing and other products from the floodplains.

How can we help impoverished fishermen as fish species and catch fall? There is no easy answer.

Le Duc Trung, deputy secretary of the Vietnam Mekong Committee, says that controlling excessive fish catch has been brought up at a number of forums among Mekong countries. There have been few positive results, because “the management of fisheries in those countries is lax”, he said, but expressed hope that countries would pursue better fisheries management methods.

Poulsen adds that while it is necessary to stop harmful ways of fishing, “it’s difficult to ban (this) outright because fishermen will lose their source of livelihood”. Addressing the problem also require local authorities to think about alternative livelihoods for fishing communities, he added.

Already, the impact of the use of harmful fishing methods and the decline of the environment is making poor fishermen downstream along the Mekong River even poorer; they are seeing their livelihoods disappear.

In search of food, many are increasingly on the move to what they hope are places with better fish catch.

Nguyen Van Nung’s family, and that of his sister’s, recently returned from Cambodia and are facing a dead end in trying to make a living in the Lang Sen wetlands reserve area in Tan Hung district in southern Long An province, which borders Cambodia.

Members of both families jostle for space in a poorly built tent on a small dune. In the tent, there is little besides two bags of rice. At night, the families lie on a tattered piece of nylon on the ground.

Nung vaguely remembers that his home village is in the Quoc Thai commune of the district of An Phu, in the southern border province of An Giang, Vietnam.

Poverty drove him and his sister to move upstream to Cambodia’s Kandal province, then on to Phnom Penh and the Great Lake. After spending some time on the river, Nung married and had three daughters. His sister also married and had two sons.

As the families grew, the boat they called home became too small for their needs, but they lacked money to build a house. Meanwhile, it became harder to make a living by fishing, so they returned to Vietnam in 2007.

Nguyen Van Bon, Nung’s brother-in-law, pointed to a net in the corner of the tent.
“That small net can never compare to weir nets, electric shock nets and high-powered motorboats. Between the nine of us, we have to throw the net and catch climbing perch and black fish from dawn until night,” he said.

“On a lucky day, we may have ten kilos of fish. Two women take them to be sold in the market, and it’s just enough to buy some rice and engine oil. On a bad day if we catch little fish, we will be hungry.”

Nung’s three daughters, aged 15 to 17, sat huddled in the ragged tent. They had never been away from the water for a single day throughout their lives.

Asked for their names, the middle child said her name was Tho. “Please write your name in my book so I can remember you,” I said.

“I didn’t go to school. I don’t know how to write,” she replied.

Gazing sadly at her daughter, Nung added: “We live on the water for days and days, and rarely stop anywhere for long. So, my three kids can’t go to class. We are also too poor.”

Like their cousins, Bon’s two sons, aged about nine and 10, were illiterate. “Would you like to go to school?” I asked the older child.

“What for? Catching fish with dad is more interesting,” he replied lightly.

Tran Van Ngoc, Nung’s neighbour, also settled here three years ago. He has four children, all of whom do not read or write.

At the ages of 18 and 20, two of his children went with their friends to Ho Chi Minh City to find whatever jobs they could, including making leather shoes, manufacturing plastic items and even tailoring. They rarely come home because “we don’t have a house, we just drift for days and days,” Ngoc said.

The same fate awaits Nung’s daughters, Tho and Tam Huong. When they become 18 or so, they will leave their parents’ tent. It’s not clear whether they will end up in the cities, or if marry poor fishermen and spend their lives on a small boat, floating in the immense waters of Dong Thap Muoi.

About 15 minutes’ travel from Nung’s tent, I stopped at Nguyen Van Hau’s home. Like Nung, Hau spent his youth following the water currents from his home in the district of Tan Hong in Dong Thap province up to Cambodia, and then returned to Vietnam.

But Hau was luckier than Nung. He married a woman from Vinh Loi commune of Tan Hung district in Long An, and then settled in a tent in his wife’s hometown. In the flood season, his already battered tent looked even more dilapidated, like it was about to be swept away by the water.

Greeting me at his home, Hau showed me a piece of paper and asked me to read it for him. It was an invitation from the management board of the Lang Sen wetlands reserve area and the Vinh Chau A communal people’s committee, asking him to pick up presents it had for poor families. The letter invited him to go to the Vinh Chau A primary school to receive the presents at 9 a.m., but it was already 11 a.m.

He moaned: “It’s too late now. Will they still give me the presents? And I don’t know what they are. I’d be grateful if I were given a motorboat. I could go far away to catch fish. Well, if people use weir nets and those with electric shocks, how can I catch any?” (END/IPSAP/LTTH/EY/JS/09)

(*This article was published in 2008 in ‘Rural Today’ newspaper in Vietnam and produced under the Imaging Our Mekong media fellowship programme 2008-09.)