Fishing, fisheries and aquaculture

The fate of 70 million people rests on what happens to the Mekong river. With world leaders meeting in Paris next week for crucial UN climate talks, John Vidal journeys down south-east Asia’s vast waterway – a place that encapsulates some of the dilemmas they ...

One of the largest and rarest freshwater fish in the world was netted by local fishermen near Phnom Penh earlier this month.A two-metre Mekong giant catfish, weighing an estimated 90 to 114 kilos, one of only a handful left of a species that faces extinction, ...

Experts are warning that the Lower Mekong Basin may soon face depleting fish stocks, further erosion of the coastline and rising salinity that will make rice fields uncultivable. An extensive, government- funded study by the Vietnam National Mekong Committee estimates the value of fish from ...

Fishing crime busts rose 150 per cent during the first nine months of 2015, compared with the same period last year, while anti-forestry crime actions dropped 13 per cent. ...

Exports of fresh fish and fish products fell significantly during the first nine months of the year, raising concerns about businesses and families operating in the Kingdom’s fisheries sector.Fresh and frozen fish export shipments fell 21 per cent during the first nine months of the ...

Fish stocks in the Mekong River in Cambodia and the Vietnamese Delta could be halved if 11 planned hydropower dams go ahead, according to the preliminary results of an extensive study funded by the Vietnamese government. ...

An international study of the health of the world’s oceans compiled by more than 65 experts this week ranked Cambodia 179 of 221 countries surveyed, confirming the fragility of the Kingdom’s marine environment. ...

More than 200 fishing trawlers from Trat province are now docking and unloading their catches in Cambodia’s adjoining Koh Kong province to evade the strict regulations being enforced against unregistered. ...

Vietnam has accused Thailand of violating international law after the shooting of four Vietnamese fishermen, one of whom was killed, by Thai maritime police in the Gulf of Thailand. ...

Three men were arrested in Kompong Chhnang province on Sunday for illegally transporting 600,000 recently hatched snakehead fish they had picked up at the Vietnamese border, police said. ...

Cambodian nongovernmental organizations and officials in Sihanoukville province have applauded a warning issued earlier this week by Interior Minister to local authorities to not accept bribes from Thai and Vietnamese fishermen to fish in the Southeast Asian nation’s waters. ...

At a ceremony to install a former military commander as governor of Preah Sihanouk province on Monday, Interior Minister Sar Kheng chided local police for allowing a Russian faction to give the tourist hub a bad name and ordered an end to illegal fishing off ...

The fish population in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap lake has declined significantly from a year ago, fishermen in the country’s Kampong Chhnang province said Friday, citing the construction of dams in the area and climate change, among other factors. ...

The calls almost always come at night. Three or four times a month, the mobile phone of Koh Pdao’s river guard outpost will ring. A villager has spotted illegal fishermen somewhere along a 10-kilometer stretch of brushy island shore and wants them caught. ...

Every evening, Seu Rin takes his family’s wooden fishing boat down the Teuk Chhu River to the waters of the Cambodian coast. ...

Following the seizure of about 100,000 snakehead fish from a van in Siem Reap province last week, police on Tuesday afternoon raided the fish farm where the illegal fry came from, according to deputy provincial police chief Oum Amra. ...

Fisheries administration officials cracked down on illegal fishing activities in Kampong Cham province’s Boeung Thom lake on Saturday, seizing and destroying illegal fish traps and more than a kilometre of illegal extra-fine netting, officials said yesterday. ...

“Turn the lights off soon, or people will see us,” the young fisherman said in a muted voice that was barely audible, even in the pre-dawn quiet. The fact that fishermen are resorting to sneaking into the lake’s protected areas speaks of an alarming ...

As about 100 fishermen in Koh Kong province on Wednesday resumed their monthslong campaign against a company they accuse of illegal sand dredging, an environmental NGO claimed the firm was now hiring locals as security guards in an attempt to divide the community. ...

Cambodia’s river guards have reported confiscating more than 35,000 metres of gill nets, 21 boats and an assortment of homemade grenades during patrols in Mekong Irrawaddy Dolphin Sanctuary in Kratie and Stung Treng provinces between May and July. ...

Their boats began disappearing from the banks of the Tonle Sap and Mekong rivers near Phnom Penh a few months ago, according to Cham fishing families still living in the area. By the weekend none were left, Cham fishermen told Khmer Times. ...

The first half of 2015 has seen a nearly 50 per cent increase in illegal fishing busts, though the vast majority resulted in no punishment for offenders, a new report from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries shows. ...

Thailand’s fishing industry has received a “yellow card” warning from the European Union for failing to address illegal fishing operations. ...

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Ouk Rabun said Wednesday that Cambodia’s fisheries production rose to 745,255 tonnes in 2014, up 2.4 percent from 728,000 a year earlier. ...