Fishing boats dock at Thọ Quang fishing port in Đà Nẵng City. All measures and inspections on IUU had been drastically completed by the city's fishery industry and relevant agencies. Photo courtesy of Trần Lê Lâm

ĐÀ NẴNG — More than 3,900 fishermen including captains and owners of trawlers in the central city of Đà Nẵng have been given awareness communications on IUU, however only 85 boats out of 1,548 have completed registration procedure for legal operation at sea.

Đà Nẵng People’s Committee reported that 41 boats were either disqualified, or stopped operation as of last month, while 34 others have been accelerating their registration and technical qualification checks to go fishing.

The committee reported that 95 per cent of the total fleet, including 607 offshore fishing vessels, had fully registered for fishing trade and qualified strict regulations, following constant inspections between October 2023 and February 2025.

All ships have been listed in the city’s fishery data with around-the-clock monitoring system at docks and during fishing at sea.

Only 14 out of 25 cases of radio disconnection had been recorded between January and February of 2025, and these violations are under investigation.

The city’s fishery sub-department said one sunken ship was reported, while the other was seized by Chinese forces at Hoàng Sa (Paracel) archipelago of Việt Nam, according to the latest IUU report.

The department also said poor signals and sub-standard radio equipment were seen as major reasons among 138 communicative disconnected ships within six months and one year between 2023-25. Some of the ships were found to have stopped radio communication because they had already docked into Thọ Quang Port.

More than 12,000 vessels with total 65,765 tonnes of fish and seafood had sent reports on fishing boat fleets and catch to the directorate of fishery and completed procedure on Certificate of Origin (CO).

Digital approvals had been given to 11,796 boat trips in and out at the home port during the 2023-25 inspections.

According to the city, 33 out of 512 violating vessels had been fined a total of VNĐ789 million (US$31,500) in the two-year inspection in efforts of removing the 'yellow card' warning issued by the European Commission from 2017.

The city has reserved a fund of VNĐ250 billion ($10 million) to upgrade the current Thọ Quang fishing port for it to become a regional standard fishery logistics centre and a ‘safe’ dock in central Việt Nam.

Đà Nẵng City’s fishery industry said all its fleet now have operational video monitoring systems which are under surveillance 24 hours a day, while all violations were clearly investigated by local authorities in 2023-25.

The EC’s delegation, which checked on Việt Nam’s IUU prevention measures in 2023, plans to conduct another inspection this month. — VNS