Thailand's Legal Reforms Could Bring Back "Bad Old Days" for Fishing

 

[By Tyler Roney]

Jirasak “Boot” Meerit left school before he was a teenager to become a fisher alongside his father. When he started a family, Meerit bought his own boat and set out to catch blue crab and spotted mackerel in Prachuap Khiri Khan province, western Thailand.

“There was fierce competition for marine resources in my day already, because large-scale commercial fishing boats were not well regulated,” Meerit says. The industry was also rife with fabricated fishing permits and destructive gear, he adds.

Thailand’s fisheries have a long history of overexploitation, dating back to the introduction of trawlers in the early 1960s. Following sanctions from the EU and criticism from the US, Thailand passed a landmark fisheries ordinance in 2015. This law introduced much-needed regulations to an industry rife with labour abuse, as well as illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) catch.

Fish populations in areas including the Andaman Sea have since begun to rebound. But proposed amendments to what has become known as the Fisheries Act are currently being debated by politicians. Some fishers and activists fear they will undo those gains.

On 7 February, Meerit joined dozens of other activists and fishers outside parliament in Bangkok to protest the proposed changes. They had passed a first reading in Thailand’s Senate in January and are now being debated in a special Senate committee. The Senate could approve the new legislation in a matter of weeks, sending it to the lower House for final approval. So, artisanal fishers and activists have little time to influence Thailand’s legislators.

Though far from Meerit’s own fishing grounds of Khan Kadai Bay, he is familiar with the area around the parliament. He is a member of the Federation of Thai Fisher Folk Association, which has been holding regular events in the capital to protest the proposals. Protesters decorated the area in front of parliament with fishing gear, and delivered speeches about the necessity of preserving both the ecosystem and current fishing regulations.

In a previous bout of protest, on 27 January, songs and speeches rang out in front of the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre on Bangkok’s busiest road, Sukhumvit. The Sarong Warriors, an activist group from southern Thailand, stitched nets into an artwork showing solidarity with fishers, and covered it in dried anchovies.

Industry and slavery

Thailand’s fisheries sector has long been plagued with allegations of labour abuse.

In 2014, the US downgraded Thailand to Tier 3 (the worst ranking) in its Trafficking in Persons report, in no small part due to reports of such abuse. Forced labor and child labor were found to be endemic on boats and in shrimp factories, and the current Fisheries Act is credited with helping to curb these practices. In 2015, the EU gave the country a “yellow card” over the issue, which was rescinded once the Fisheries Act had eased concerns.

But the labour issue has come to the fore again, as the government attempts to boost the industry by amending the Fisheries Act. The Department of Fisheries says the industry supported more than two million jobs in 2,500 fishing villages as of 2018.

Under current regulations, a factory identified to have forced or child labor must suspend operations until an investigation is completed. Dialogue Earth consulted Dominic Thomson, the Southeast Asia regional director for the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), an NGO that campaigns to uphold environmental and human rights protections. Thomson says the new draft act weakens those regulations, by permitting factories under investigation to continue operating normally.

Woraphop Viriyaroj, a member of parliament and deputy chair of the Senate committee, is considering amendments to the Fisheries Act. “For labor, make it clear that we did not change overall labor protection,” he tells Dialogue Earth. “We just amended some words.” Viriyaroj insists the Labour Protection in Fisheries Act, passed in 2019, is sufficient. But he also acknowledges that the punishments for violators are tougher in the 2015 act.

Night fishing and Article 69

Damage to the environment is a major concern of those opposed to the proposals. Changes to the existing act would include Article 69. Such tweaks would permit night fishing at more than 12 nautical miles from the shore, using nets with a mesh finer than 2.5 centimeters.

The Federation of Thai Fisher Folk Association claims this alone could cost Thailand more than 200 billion baht ($6 billion) per year in species lost to fine-mesh nets. This would in turn damage ecosystems upon which other fisheries rely. While the existing act allows for the use of these nets during the day, activists believe night operations are a step in the wrong direction.

“Now the public campaign is in a very important state. Article 69 has not been signed, not passed by the Senate,” Wichoksak Ronnarongpairee, president of the Thai Sea Watch Association, tells Dialogue Earth.

The use of fine nets at night, Ronnarongpairee says, means ships that aim to use high-intensity lights to attract squid will end up catching juveniles of many other species. The effects could ripple up the food chain.  

Jirasak Meerit with fellow fishers to protest outside Thailand’s parliament in February. He is worried changes to the Fisheries Act could bring back destructive practices, such as the use of finer nets that cause high levels of bycatch (Image: Tyler Roney / Dialogue Earth)

Meerit says he has seen these types of inadvertently destructive practices with his own eyes, even while the practice has been illegal: “The trawlers cannot differentiate species … When the animals are brought ashore for sorting, they are not just squids that they targeted, but juvenile crabs, mackerel and several others.”

Viriyaroj tells Dialogue Earth that measures to guard against overfishing, such as no new large trawlers being built, will ease overfishing concerns. He adds that fishing during the night “just makes more economic sense."

Bancha Sukkaew, director general of the Department of Fisheries, has said the law would improve incomes for fishers, and reduce reliance on imports by increasing catches. The National Fisheries Association of Thailand, which represents the large-scale commercial sector, has also strongly backed the changes. It says they will bring economic benefits.

Transhipment and the IUU problem

Last year, the EJF identified 18 concerning amendments in the proposed changes, 15 of which have since been amended. Remaining problems, the EJF claims, include labour rights and tariffs on low-value catch, also known as “trash fish." But Thomson says changes to rules on transferring catches between boats at sea are “the biggest red flag."

“It’s a practice that we have identified in investigations all around the world as being incredibly opaque, because you don’t have the authorities there, so you can transfer whatever you like. It could be illegal catch and you can mix it in with the batch that’s on the receiving vessel,” says Thomson.

“The new legislation … could result in potentially hundreds if not thousands of fishing vessels being able to suddenly tranship catch while they’re at sea.”

Viriyaroj says Thailand’s IUU measures are up to international standards and concerns are largely unfounded. Vessels wishing to tranship would have to register and comply with regulations, he insists.

“Many countries allow transhipment, just make that clear. It comes with regulations,” he tells Dialogue Earth. “We think transhipment should be allowed with regulation, it should not be totally banned.”

Last chance for changes

Activists and fishers say they do not expect to be able to halt the bill altogether, but pushing for changes is seen as crucial.

“The new act will turn the clock back, bringing us back to the bad old days when we were imposed with a yellow card under the anti-IUU policy,” Merrit says. “More importantly, our efforts to revive our sea would become zero, because marine animals will be overexploited once again.”

This article appears courtesy of Dialogue Earth and may be found in its original form here.