In January this year, the weather in the fishing grounds is generally favorable. This is the month adjacent to Tet, so fishermen actively cling to the sea. Compared to the same period last year, the number of days of operation of fishing boats is more (Lunar New Year 2020 focuses on January). Fishery production was estimated at 245.4 thousand tons, up 2.5% over the same period last year; marine exploitation reached 232.3 thousand tons, up 2.7%. In which, fish production reached 191.6 thousand tons, up 2.5%; shrimp production reached 11.0 thousand tons, up 4.8%. However, the Covid-19 epidemic broke out and spread on a large scale, affecting the consumption market and the price of aquatic products. The domestic consumption market decreased, the Chinese consumer market also limited imports to prevent the spread of disease, lower product prices compared to the past, making it difficult for fishing activities. In addition, the warning “Yellow card” for fishing products, recommendations and problems in the procedures for certifying and certifying the origin of fish caught in the European market continue to affect seafood exploitation and export activities of our country. Fishing vessels wishing to go to sea must have a license to exploit, operate the right fishing grounds, do not exploit in foreign water, have to install cruise monitoring equipment and turn on continuously during operation, before leaving 1 hour notice to enter the port … Therefore, local fishing activities have installed cruise monitoring equipment for fishing vessels with a length of 15m and a Movimar satellite connection device for ships of 24m in length as recommended of the European Commission to manage the exploitation, warn ships to violate the waters of other countries, towards sustainable sea exploitation and contribute to removing the yellow card for Vietnamese seafood. Sea fishing boats are restructured in the direction of gradually reducing small-capacity ships for offshore fishing and increasing large-capacity ships, improving productivity of boats, promoting offshore exploitation.
The application of technological and technical advances in the field of fishing, especially in product preservation, reducing post-harvest losses, has been gradually improved, but still slowly, not meeting the demand develop. The behavior and customs of fishermen are slowly changing, failing to keep up with the modernization process of fishing activities.
The major seafood import markets in the world, especially the EU, the US, Japan, and Korea, all have strict requirements for quality control and traceability. Various seafood traceability methods and hundreds of individual systems have emerged in recent years in seafood supply chains and technology providers. This has made it difficult for Vietnam’s fishing activities because it has to meet the increasing demands of importers.
The current urgent problem of Vietnamese fisheries is to switch from fishing to sea farming, namely reducing the vessel capacity, reducing the catch, increasing the area of marine farming that applies high technology; At the same time, closely following the aquaculture planning to improve the value chain. To do that, it must combine RFID technology (a radio frequency identification system) and blockchain (a database system that allows storing and transmitting blocks of information) to build. the traceability system aims to help manage and check the origin of seafood more easily; At the same time, it is possible to strictly control offshore fishing and effectively manage the aquaculture.