Effectiveness of vessel monitoring systems in managing and monitoring fishing vessels in Ca Mau province, Vietnam

Abstract

Since October 2017, Vietnam’s fisheries have made efforts to address the European Commission (EC)’s yellow card warning. One key factor in removing the yellow card warning was implementing a fishing vessel monitoring system (VMS) to manage and monitor fishing vessels at sea and prevent them from violating foreign waters. However, there has been limited research evaluating the effectiveness of VMS in Vietnam. To address this gap, this study focused on evaluating the use of VMS in Ca Mau province, one of the country’s dominant fisheries. The study collected primary and secondary data from 94 surveyed fishermen who were captains and owners of Ca Mau fishing vessels equipped with VMS between December 2021 and April 2022. The findings showed that 99.5% of fishing vessels were equipped with VMS, with the ZuniVN-01 equipment being the most commonly selected (39.7%), followed by Viettel S-tracking (24.2%), and BA-SAT-01 (23.5%). However, these VMS failures occurred frequently, with the most significant being disconnection for more than ten days between the VMS onboard and the local control center. Despite these failures, 96.8% of respondents believed that VMS was effective, particularly for emergency rescue functions (73.4%). The automatic transmission of the vessel’s location via GPS every two or three hours received the highest rating (78.7%) from respondents. Additionally, most fishers (68.5%) believed that the core requirements of VMS were appropriate. Based on the study’s results, practical recommendations were proposed to stakeholders to improve the effectiveness of VMS.