Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha has taken the right stand in his refusal to bow to the demand of fisheries associations to extend the deadline for two more months for illegal fishing boats to register and apply for fishing licences with the Harbour and Fisheries departments.
The prime minister said the main reason the operators have failed to meet the deadline which passed yesterday is because they failed to cooperate with authorities.
And he is right. Fishing boat operators had been notified about the registration several months ago when the European Commission issued a warning for Thailand to stamp out IUU (illegal, unregulated, unreported) fishing. But they ignored it.
Now faced with the threat of heavy fines — up to 100,000 baht — if caught fishing without a proper licence, many illegal fishing boats of different sizes have stopped fishing and are now docked at various ports in coastal provinces.
Their owners have issued threats about mass protests and warned of grave economic repercussions to the seafood industry to pressure the government. They claim they were not given enough time to prepare for the changes, which they say are costly to implement.
The effects of the stoppage have already been felt, but within limited scope. Seafood prices in some markets have risen by up to 20% as supplies of fish, crabs, squid and other marine products have declined.
But there is no reason for the public and the government in particular to panic and quickly kowtow to the demands of the owners.
It must not be forgotten that most of these illegal fishing boats are engaging in environmentally destructive fishing.
If there is less seafood on dinner plates because the boats have stopped fishing, it is a price that consumers will have to live with, and only temporarily.
In the long run, the country will benefit as the crackdown will allow the seas to self-rehabilitate and fish stocks as well as other marine creatures to rejuvenate.
Giving a two-month reprieve to the illegal fishing fleet owned by a handful of operators will only allow them to carry on with their destructive fishing practices and further plunder the seas and oceans of fish stocks.
There are no guarantees they will become legal or stop overfishing afterwards. Moreover, any softening of approach will put the country at risk of being slapped with a possible seafood import ban by the European Union, which would have more far-reaching impacts on Thailand.
What the government needs to do now is to speed up the process of registration and issuing licences.
If the Fisheries Department has not have enough staff to do the job as has always been the case in the past, more personnel should be hired.
More importantly, the fisheries law must be amended to outlaw all illegal fishing gear which have been responsible for the depletion of fish stocks and destruction of coral reefs in Thai territorial waters.
The current practice of allowing illegal fishing gear such as fine-meshed fishing nets to be registered and used should be scrapped.
It should be noted there are far too many fishing boats in this country and most of them are illegal. And if these illegal fishing boats cannot or are unwilling to comply with the law, they would be better left rusting at ports or shipyards. That would be a boon for our seas and food security.
