On July 9, Mr. Tran Xuan Tien - Director of the Sub-Department of Fisheries and Fisheries Surveillance of Quang Tri province said that by the end of June 2026, the whole province still had 78 fishing vessels that did not meet operating conditions.
This is one of the shortcomings that needs to be further overcome in the process of implementing solutions to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
According to the Steering Committee for Combating IUU Fishing of Quang Tri province, the locality currently has 4,632 registered fishing vessels, of which 1,346 vessels are 15m long or more. The rate of licensed vessels reaches 99.1%; the rate of vessels from 15m or more installing vessel monitoring devices (VMS) reaches 99.6%.
However, there are still 78 fishing vessels that do not meet operating conditions due to expired licenses, inspection, food safety certificates or not yet installed journey monitoring equipment.
The main reason is that many ships have been ashore for a long time, ship owners have economic difficulties, go abroad or are carrying out transfer procedures, deleting registration, and extending papers according to regulations.
To manage this group of ships, the Provincial Steering Committee for IUU fishing assigned the commune-level People's Committee to closely monitor the anchoring locations, seal and attach identification signs for fishing vessels that do not meet operating conditions; and at the same time request the Border Guard force to strictly control at sea mouths to prevent ships from going out to sea for illegal fishing.
In the first 6 months of 2026, Quang Tri has completed 7/20 tasks assigned by the Government on combating IUU fishing, the remaining 13 tasks are being implemented on schedule and there are no overdue tasks. Accumulated from the beginning of the year to date, the locality has updated 24 times the list of fishing vessels at high risk of IUU violations and 2 times updated the list of fishing vessels with deregistered status.
According to reports, from the beginning of the year to the end of June, functional forces discovered 280 cases related to the seafood sector; 65 cases were fined with a total amount of more than 1.85 billion VND, 207 cases were closed and 8 cases are being further processed. The locality has also not recorded fishing vessels violating foreign waters in the reporting period.
The Steering Committee for Combating IUU Fishing of Quang Tri province assessed that the work of combating IUU fishing has had many positive changes. However, the locality still faces difficulties due to the large number of small fishing vessels operating near the shore, the fishing port system not meeting needs, the management of out-of-province vessels losing VMS connection is still limited, and the human resources for performing tasks have not met requirements.
