Thai fisheries target value added export processing

Fishermen growing shellfish and cage culture marine fish are among those badly affected by the high volume of freshwater flowing into the sea along with pond farmers growing shrimp in nearby coastal provinces.

Heavy rainfall in northern and central Thailand in September has led to serious flooding in central Thailand, at one time threatening the capital, Bangkok, where the worst flooding in 60 years has been recorded in outer suburbs.

Government flood control measures have involved the use of flood barriers, dykes and canals to prevent flooding in the city centre while floodwaters moving south from central Thailand flow out to sea through the Chao Phraya River that passes through Bangkok and through rivers passing either side of the capital.

“Inland fisheries has been affected by the flooding including cage culture along the Chao Phraya River and inland prawn farming,” said Dr Waraporn Prompoj, Senior Expert on International Fisheries Affairs in the Department of Fisheries. “The floods also have affected

coastal fisheries as the huge mass of floodwater runoff has affected coastal seawater salinity and destroyed mussels and cage culture fish, especially sea bass production around Chachaengsao near the mouth of the Bang Pakong River.

“Coastal aquaculture is mostly shrimp farming. Only a few provinces have been affected by flooding such as Chachaengsao.”

The draining flood waters are expected to affect coastal fisheries in affected areas for several months before salinity levels begin to return to normal. Fishermen and fish farmers in the affected coastal areas have been advised not to invest in breeding stocks until normal sea water and brackish water salinity has recovered.

Apart from causing shellfish and marine cage culture fish to die, the affect of large volumes of fresh water entering coastal waters has been to drive marine fish away, causing a fall in coastal catches along both the eastern and western seaboards.

Overall impact
Although the current flooding has had a major impact on manufacturing output in industrial estates in flooded areas of Bangkok and central Thailand, the overall impact on the Kingdom’s fisheries industry is not expected to be very large.

Fisheries is a major economic sector for coastal communities and an important foreign exchange earner as Thailand is the world’s largest exporter of farmed shrimp and one of the largest exporters of canned tuna.

According to Fisheries Department figures, Thailand’s fisheries production stood at 3.29 million metric tons (mt) in 2009, not including distant water fisheries. In addition more than 1 million mt of fishery products were imported for export processing including tuna for canning.

Wild capture fisheries accounted for 1.87 million mt of total fisheries production with coastal marine catch reaching 1.67 million mt and inland capture fisheries 200,000 mt.

Aquaculture production in 2009 totalled 1.41 million mt, consisting of 890,000 mt of mariculture production and 520,000 mt of freshwater aquaculture output.

Fisheries production in 2009 was the same tonnage as the previous year but down 10% from 3.67 million mt in 2007 when a larger marine wild catch of 2 million mt was recorded.

“Marine capture fisheries production is coming down and aquaculture production is going up,” Dr Waraporn commented. “In 1990 coastal aquaculture production totalled 193,000 mt while in 2009 production was 895,000 mt. It’s increased a lot as a result of shrimp farming.”

“Marine fisheries in the Gulf of Thailand is more affected than the Andaman Sea. Some 60% of our marine catch is from the Gulf of Thailand.”

Various species
Fish of various species represented 1.34 million mt or slightly over half of Thailand’s total marine fisheries production in 2009. The main species caught were Indo-Pacific mackerel, Indian mackerel, king mackerel, anchovies, round scads, jellyfish, blue swimming crab, short necked clam, squid, cuttlefish, octopus and banana shrimp.

Shrimp production was 630 million mt in 2009, almost one quarter of the marine harvest. Mollusc production totalled 324 million mt, squid and cuttlefish 110 million mt and crabs almost 32 million mt.

In addition to marine fisheries production, freshwater fish amounting to 695 million mt accounted for 95% of freshwater fisheries production in 2009. Freshwater shrimp were the other major product with output reaching 28 million mt that year.

Meanwhile, government plans call for the long term development of sustainable fisheries production with most future growth expected to come from aquaculture.

In 2010 the government launched the Marine Fisheries Management Master Plan which will run for a 10 year period backed by 6 billion baht (US$150 million) in state funding.

The actual budget allocation for each year depends on activities proposed for a particular year. In 2010 the annual budget was 200 million baht, Dr Waraporn noted, while a budget of 300 million baht was proposed for 2011.

The Marine Fisheries Management Master Plan consists of five major strategies, the key strategy being to improve the fishery sector’s efficiency and sustainability through improving fisheries management by involving fishermen in sustainable fisheries co-management at the fishing village level.

“In the first year of the Master Plan we surveyed the fishing industry as we need to know fishing boat and fishermen numbers, and other figures to calibrate our statistics,” Dr Waraporn said.

Fishing fleet
According to Fishery Department figures Thailand’s fishing fleet numbered 12,920 vessels in 2008 of which 6,220 were less than 14 metres in length, 3,050 were 14 to 18 metres in length and 3,550 were 18 to 25 metres. In addition, some 104 vessels over 25 metres in length were registered in Thailand.

“We also tried to implement our first Master Plan strategy in the first year,” Dr Waraporn continued. “We tried to do this through provincial level committees working with fishing villages on co-management. This involved provincial fisheries offices working with local government and our Fisheries Department headquarters.”

“Also, we have freshwater aquaculture R&D centres in all 76 provinces around the country. In addition 22 coastal provinces have coastal aquaculture centres.”

The Master Plan’s second strategy involves improving the organisation of institutional management of fisheries. The third strategy aims at promoting responsible and sustainable fisheries management including continuing the Fishery Department’s long running programme building artificial reefs along Thailand’s lengthy coastline.

Since reef building started more than 20 years ago, more than 2,000 square kilometres of artificial reefs have been built, restoring fish stocks in the surrounding areas.

“Grey pomfret, for example, had almost disappeared but has now returned,” Dr Waraporn said. “Fishermen are aware of government support and now fishermen watch over the reefs. In the past we had to explain the purpose of reefs to them and now they appreciate the reefs.

“Coastal water must be at least 8 metres deep to build artificial reefs. We consult with fishermen where to put them so that they are accessible. In the past the artificial reefs were usually 3km out to sea but now they are up to 5km offshore.

“In fact, 3km was the old conservation area limit within which trawlers were prohibited. We extended the conservation area to 5km two years ago so now artificial reefs are built up to 5km out at sea.”

Concrete blocks are mainly used to construct artificial reefs along with old vehicles. Artificial reefs have been built at more than 200 sites along the Thai coastline with 10 to 15 new sites being added each year.

Rehabilitating coastal ecosystem
The government’s fourth strategy to promote long term sustainable fisheries development is to rehabilitate Thailand’s coastal ecosystem and fishing grounds to maintain biodiversity and marine environmental quality.

This includes the use and enforcement of laws and regulations governing fishing methods and fishing grounds to promote sustainable stocks. Seasonal closures and regulations on fishing in various areas have been implemented since 1984.

In addition to the recently extended 5km inshore conservation zone where trawling and motorised push netting of any type are prohibited, light luring fishing using nets with less than 2.5cm mesh size is banned.

Large stationary fishing gear is required to be registered and only fishermen with existing licenses are permitted to apply for an annual extension to the license. Also, in a bid to reduce fishing overcapacity, since 2010 the Department of Fisheries has required all trawler owners to obtain operating licenses on a yearly basis with those not renewing being removed from the registration system.

The government’s fifth strategy involves promoting distant water fisheries to reduce pressure on Thailand’s own fishery stocks. The strategy includes efforts to develop sustainable fisheries including increasing IUU protection.

“We have to supply catch certificates for all fishery exports to the EU. Some other countries require this as well,” Dr Waraporn said, noting that the Fisheries Department has patrol boats to monitor illegal fishing.

Most of Thailand’s distant water fishing activities are for tuna and other major species. Most distant water fishing vessels operate in waters of other Southeast Asian countries including Myanmar where about 500 Thai fishing boats operate at present.

Joint venture fishing
According to the Department of Fisheries figures about 300 Thai fishing boats are involved in joint venture fishing activities in Indonesian waters while in Malaysia less than 100 fishing boats operate in joint venture with local partners.

Elsewhere, Thai vessels operate in territorial waters controlled by India, Bangladesh, Oman and Yemen, and in waters controlled by Papua New Guinea in the eastern Pacific.

Thailand is a major exporter of seafood. In addition to domestic fishery production, more than 1 million mt of fishery products are imported most years for export processing in modern processing plants.

Located near to major fishing ports, the processing plants employ Thai and migrant workers from Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia. Although Thai workers are more skilled and experienced, migrant workers are employed due to a labour shortage.

In 2010 Thailand exported around 2 million mt of fishery products worth US$7.8 billion with shrimp and tuna accounting for most of the export value.

The United States, Japan and EU countries are the main export markets.

“We are the world’s number one shrimp exporter for the past 18 years. Our nearest competitor exports just 50% of our shrimp total,” Dr Waraporn said, “We supply top quality. We have a code of conduct since 1988 that we apply to shrimp farms. We can certify 17,000 of our total 25,000 total shrimp farms. We never stop developing shrimp quality.”

Efforts to improve fisheries production quality include the development of group farming schemes and fish farm clusters.

Certification
The Department of Fisheries recently has completed a pilot two year FAO group farm certification project. Plans call for the scheme to be extended to the whole of Thailand for shrimp farming and freshwater Nile tilapia farming.

“We have good shrimp traceability. We have had manual traceability for eight years,” Dr Waraporn said, “Now we have computerised shrimp traceability from brood stock to hatcheries and then farms, processing and export. We can also check shrimp feed formula. This started as a pilot scheme in 2008. Now we plan to launch it nationally in the next eight months.”

Meanwhile, the government also has ambitious targets for the long term development of freshwater aquaculture. Freshwater fish production is growing, particularly output of Nile tilapia.

The Fisheries Department has set an annual production target of 300,000 mt for Nile tilapia of which about 70,000 mt currently is produced each year.

The target for freshwater shrimp production is 500,000 mt a year, Dr Waraporn noted, almost 20 times current production levels.

“We have doubled fresh water shrimp production already since 2000. We can increase our capacity without harming resources,” Dr Waraporn said. “We have educated shrimp farmers over the past two decades. Now they educate and train themselves.

“We make sure production is safe for export and to consume domestically; also, that fish farmers do not use antibiotics in the farming system.

“We have inspection teams in coastal aquaculture centres. We check for antibiotics 21 days before harvest to make sure the products are safe and we check them again before export.

“There is a good future for fisheries in Thailand especially aquaculture as production is continuing to improve in quality. R&D is continuing for fish disease protection; also, into alternative feed development for shrimp and fish farming.”