PURSAT – Pursat provincial police have launched a week-long campaign to crack down on widespread illegal fishing.

Authorities say they have confiscated and destroyed many kinds of illegal fishing equipment on the Tonle Sap Lake from Kampon Loung in Krakor district to the Kampong Chhang province border.

Pursat deputy governor Khoy Vida said yesterday that the crackdown started on Tuesday and would continue to the end of the week.

Fisheries experts and armed forces were helping to carry out checks.

Mr. Vida said that in two days, authorities have seized a 40 kilometer fishing net and a lot of illegal fishing equipment. Almost 6,000 kilograms of fish had been released. However, forces did not arrest the perpetrators, only educated them...
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/32912/ ... l-fishing/

A forty kilometer fishing net??? I'd like to see the size of the boats that handled it.

taabarang wrote:A forty kilometer fishing net??? I'd like to see the size of the boats that handled it.

seriously, can you imagine pulling the damn thing in by hand?

must be a typo.....


cheers


Bertros

Tonle Sap is huge. Imagine all the 20-30m bits through all the estuaries and in the lake and you quickly get to 40km. They're always overfishing so this is a good move.

Minister: Stop Illegal Fishing or Step Down

Interior Minister Sar Kheng has publically warned government officials in the areas surrounding the Tonle Sap Lake that they will be fired if they continued to allow illegal fishing.

“All provincial governors around the Tonle Sap Lake will be dismissed from their positions if they let fishing crimes occur in their provinces,” he was quoted as saying on the National Police website.

The deputy prime minister added that the government will create a taskforce, led by National Police chief Neth Savoeun, to crack down on illegal fishing in the lake and will provide the group with speedboats to conduct better enforcement.
“These actions will be carried out regularly. I will also fly over the area to check every two weeks to a month,” he said.

http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/33785/ ... step-down/

Fishermen from three provinces around the Tonle Sap Lake have launched a protest against limits on the size of their nets.

One of them, Kong Sophea, said that on Monday that about 120 villagers from Kampong Thom’s Phat Sanday commune and 40 from Pursat and Battambang provinces hired taxis to come to the capital to meet Prime Minister HE in Phnom Penh.

Their protest came after the government created a national anti-illegal fishing committee last month.

Mr. Sophea said: “We want 500 meter barrier nets and 2.5cm fine mesh nylon nets. If we use this length, we could get fish to support our livelihood.”
With this net they could get about 50 kilograms in a morning, he said. However, the legal length of a net is 50 meters.
“I do not accept 50 meters because it cannot support our livelihood and feed our children,” he said. “Each villager owes the bank at least 10 million riel ($2,500).”

Mr. Sophea said villagers had secretly used barrier nets up to 300 meters, and some used up to 500 meters in their region...
http://www.khmertimeskh.com/news/33873/ ... fishermen/

A big problem with the fine mesh nets is that they trap minnows which are not released. Most of the larger fish sold in the village morning market come from aquaculture. Villagers like the small ones because they are cheap.

Tonle Sap Fishing Communities Cast Doubt Over Crackdown
by Van Roeun | January 5, 2017

Fishing communities living around the Tonle Sap hailed a pledged crackdown on illegal fishing in the provinces surrounding the lake, but cautioned that the efforts launched last week will fail if they are piecemeal or carried out without sustained surveillance.

Minh Bunly, the Tonle Sap coordinator for the Fisheries Action Coalition Team, said the use of illegal fishing gear had been on the rise in the past few years due to weak law enforcement and the lake’s sprawling public fishing grounds.

“To me, when local authorities are empowered and the crackdown is conducted indiscriminately, it could be effective,” Mr. Bunly said on Wednesday.

Huth Han, a representative of fishermen in Battambang province, said that pairs of trawlers dragging nets equipped with lamps illuminating the water below was a common sight in Ek Phnom district’s Koh Chivaing commune.

“I don’t believe that this crackdown will be effective because I have seen these crimes for years and they are well-protected,” Mr. Han said.

Prime Minister HE, in a directive dated December 13, appointed Agriculture Minister Veng Sakhon to mobilize authorities to patrol the sprawling lake, which environmentalists for years have warned is being overfished—often for cash and subsistence—to the point of irreversible destruction...
https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/tonl ... wn-122980/

taabarang wrote:A forty kilometer fishing net??? I'd like to see the size of the boats that handled it.

I'm thinking they meant 40K of fishing net. An estimated total of all the nets. Maybe.

Good news. Gradually measures are being taken to curb the illegal fishing of the Tonle Sap Lake.

All Tonle Sap Fishing Boats to Be Registered, Minister Says
| March 8, 2017 |
Officials are drafting a directive that would require all fishing boats in provinces surrounding the Tonle Sap Lake to be registered, an attempt to curb illegal fishing on the sprawling lake as part of a crackdown that started last year.

“All fishermen have to get their boats registered,” Agriculture Minister Veng Sakhon said on Tuesday. “This is a measure to curb anarchic fishing and track down the fishing boats using illegal gear on the Tonle Sap Lake.”

The directive will require all fishing and transport boats on the Tonle Sap to register with the Public Works and Transport Ministry. Number plates will also have to be affixed to vessels, and the names of their owners recorded, Mr. Sakhon said.

It will also designate which areas of the lake will allow the use of fishing gear and which will be off-limits, seeking to ensure fish can migrate freely, Mr. Sakhon said, adding that sensitive areas like the lake’s bottleneck in Kompong Chhnang province should be off-limits.
The draft is expected to be finalized next week and then brought before an interministerial meeting, Mr. Sakhon said...

https://www.cambodiadaily.com/news/all- ... ys-126250/