Background:
Kep Gets Fisheries Office, Waiting on Patrol Boat
Cambodia Daily | 4 December 2015
KEP CITY – The provincial governor on Thursday called for an end to
the illegal fishing [blah, blah, blah, blah...] that plagues the ocean here, but officials charged
with carrying out the order explained how difficult it would be to
uproot entrenched fishing communities—especially given that they don’t
have a boat.
“Year after year, we have seen that our sea resources are being
reduced. There is not a lot of legal fishing here,” Mr. Satha said at a
ceremony to inaugurate the new fisheries cantonment, which brings Kep in
line with other coastal provinces.
“Please, all authorities, cooperate with fisheries officials to protect our sea resources and put an end to illegal fishing.”
The ceremony elevated Kuch Virak from his position as deputy chief of
the Kampot fisheries cantonment to head the Kep branch, with a team of
three deputies and 10 officers set to do battle with the roughly 50
boats, mostly from Prek Tanin village, that continue to ply the waters
despite increasing pressure to stop.
“Those fishermen have a lot of tactics and we have never had the
tools to stop them,” Mr. Satha said. “There have only been four
fisheries officers, so when they came face to face with suspects, there
was always the risk of an incident.”
However, while Mr. Virak has been given the authority and the team to
tackle the trawlers—often manned by crews that use electric currents to
stun sea life and simplify their job—he is still lacking one vital
tool.
“We don’t have a patrol boat and we don’t know when we will get one,”
he said, explaining that the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and
Fisheries was currently discussing how to provide the new cantonment
with a vessel. A ministry spokesman could not be reached.
In the meantime, Mr. Virak said, he would collaborate with Marine
Conservation Cambodia (MCC), an organization stationed on Koh Seh island
that has loaned vessels to fisheries officials in the past.
Cambodia’s 2006 Fisheries Law effectively makes all trawling illegal
in the shallow inshore waters off Kep. Electric fishing is outlawed
across the country. And while Mr. Virak said he was eager to finally
wipe out these two methods, which conservationists say have decimated
Kep’s fish stocks and breeding grounds almost to a point of no return,
he also warned of the social upheaval that could ensue should the
fishermen from Prek Tanin be stripped of the income stream that they
have relied on for so long.
“We need to give more consideration to how to deal with these people
who are using methods that they would call traditional,” Mr. Virak said.
“They have been fishing in the area since 1992; the law came after
that, so there must be more discussions.”
Sao Sarin, chief of the fisheries cantonment in Kampot, where illegal
fishing is also rampant, was at Thursday’s event and said that the
solution could be in sacrificing part of the ocean to the trawlers in
exchange for them leaving the rest to flourish.
“We must separate the seagrass from the trawling,” he said, conceding
that a definite end to all illegal fishing was unlikely. “You want to
stop it all? OK, let’s just bring all boats back to the mainland and
keep them here.”
During and following the ceremony to inaugurate the new Fisheries
cantonment, tourism was repeatedly raised as the chief reason to shut
down the illegal trawlers, which in one night can turn crystal waters
into a murky brown soup.
Som Chenda, director of the provincial tourism department, claimed
that the province had already received in excess of 1 million visitors
this year (up from 700,000 in all of 2014) and said that banishing the
trawlers was key to the survival of one of the province’s biggest draws.
“The crab, there is not enough for all the tourists coming to Kep
province—the governor has talked about that as well. The crab in Kep is
very good, very delicious,” he said. No trawlers, he added, would mean
“more crabs. More crabs, more tourists.”
Diving, too, has great potential in the waters of Kep and the
archipelago that stretches south from its coast, according to Paul
Ferber, the director of MCC, which is working to rehabilitate the
seagrass around Koh Seh.
“The area could be perfect for Cambodians to learn to dive. There are
no real currents, the water is not deep. It could be a training
ground,” he said.
“There is huge potential for accomplished divers as well. There are
shallow reefs—more diverse than in Sihanoukville—seahorses and all sorts
of uncommon sea life that you can’t see in other areas. For underwater
photographers, it would be an absolute mecca.”
Mr. Ferber said he had operated dive tours here previously but was forced to give up.
“You just can’t trust the conditions,” he said. “If the trawlers have
been out the night before, you can’t even see your student in front of
you.”
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