Thousands of fishing trawler operators and fishing boat crew on Friday gathered in separate rallies in 22 coastal provinces in protest against the government's stringent regulations aimed at countering illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
Submitting an eleven-point request to the government through their local authorities, the fishing groups threatened to scale up their protest and march in Bangkok if the government fails to heed their demand for a relaxation of the regulations, which they said had already forced many out of the fishing business.
In the southern province of Satun, more than 5,000 workers in both the traditional commercial fishing sectors gathered at the town hall to submit a copy of the same eleven-point request to Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha through the deputy provincial governor.
Somkiat Liangprasit, president of Satun's fishery association, said if the government fails to respond by Dec 16, about 10,000 people from these 22 provinces will carry out a mass protest in the capital.
The number of protesters will increase by 10,000 per day, he claimed.
Many new announcements and regulations have been rolled out over the past four to five years which have made the lives of the people in the fishing industry harder, Mr Somkiat said.
"As a result, many have been forced to quit as they can no longer cope with escalating debts caused by complying with the tougher regulations," he said.
The first of the eleven points in the demand was that all government agencies must stop issuing new regulations and begin amending the existing ones, he said.
Elsewhere, more than 500 people in Trat parked about a hundred cars around the town hall as they submitted a copy of the document to the deputy governor.
Another 300 protesters rallied from Sanam Chai in Phuket to the provincial hall for the same purpose.
Somyot Wongbunyasakun, president of Phuket fishery association, said its members were adamant that the regulatory system must be overhauled entirely.