Why are many fishermen not interested in electronic fishing logs?

According to the Fisheries Law and related documents, keeping a fishing log is a mandatory requirement for fishing vessels with a length of 12m or more. This is an important task in tracing the origin of aquatic products, monitoring production statistics, helping management agencies monitor and supervise fishing vessels operating in the right areas, in accordance with the law, and preventing fishing vessels from illegally operating in the sea.

Electronic fishing logbooks have many advantages over traditional logbooks, such as increasing transparency, easy management, saving time and costs, while supporting the traceability of seafood and contributing to removing the "yellow card" of the European Commission.

In Ha Tinh , electronic logging has been implemented for more than a year now, but most fishermen are not interested.

Mr. Hoang Van Vien - owner of fishing boat TH-92148-TS in Cac Son commune, Thanh Hoa province, regularly visits Cua Sot fishing port, Loc Ha commune. Although his phone has been installed with the software on "Electronic seafood traceability system" for more than a year now and has been trained and instructed by the Management Board of Fishing Ports and Fishing Boat Storm Shelters in Ha Tinh to keep an electronic fishing log, he still chooses to keep a paper log and then when he arrives at the port, he continues to record it to submit to the authorities.

Mr. Hoang Van Vien said: "Through the instructions, I found that keeping an electronic diary and doing procedures with the authorities is quite simple, but I still write by hand because when working at sea, holding the phone to perform operations is quite cumbersome."

Keeping a fishing logbook with paper is difficult because fishing at sea is easily wet, so after each time recording on paper, when returning to shore, fishermen have to continue recording and declaring again, which takes a lot of time. Meanwhile, using an electronic logbook, each time the net is cast, fishermen only need to click on the pre-installed software, the system will automatically update information about coordinates, ship location, fish type, after declaring the yield, the data will be sent to the shore station.

Although it is convenient, most fishermen think it is not easy to implement. Mr. Nguyen Van Nam in Loc Ha commune, Ha Tinh province gave the reason for not applying electronic fishing logs: "When fishing at sea, we often use phones without internet connection, and even if we had a phone with internet connection, there would be no signal at sea, so we do not implement electronic fishing logs as instructed."

Ha Tinh currently has nearly 350 fishing vessels with a length of 12m or more that are required to keep a fishing logbook. In the past, the recording of fishing logbooks was done manually by the ship owners/captains and submitted to the authorities. However, there are still many shortcomings in recording fishing logbooks on paper. These include inaccurate recording, incomplete recording of aquatic species in the fishing logbook compared to the actual loading and unloading components; lack of information in the logbook; incorrect recording of coordinates in the fishing logbook compared to coordinates in the monitoring of fishing vessel journeys, leading to discrepancies in information compared to reality. In particular, many ship owners have difficulty writing logbooks by hand, with unclear handwriting and erasures.

Meanwhile, with electronic logs, the data collected is digital data, through digital devices, helping the recorder to perform easily just by operating on a smartphone without needing an internet connection. Therefore, fishermen can perform in offshore waters, when there is an internet connection, the system will review the data.

Staff of the Management Board of Fishing Ports and Storm Shelters for Fishing Vessels in Ha Tinh instruct fishermen to keep electronic fishing logs.

To help fishing vessel owners easily comply with regulations on recording fishing logs, in June 2024, the Ha Tinh Fisheries Department deployed the "Electronic Fisheries Traceability System" software and issued nearly 4,000 accounts to fishing vessels participating in fishing. This software integrates many functions to support the management of fishing activities, including the function of recording electronic logs to serve the purpose of tracing the origin, ensuring transparency. However, currently, very few fishermen use this function.

Fishermen still keep the habit of keeping paper fishing logs while having installed electronic logging applications.

Mr. Than Quoc Te - Deputy Director of the Management Board of Fishing Ports and Storm Shelters for Fishing Vessels in Ha Tinh said: "To thoroughly overcome the warnings of the European Commission on combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, in the coming time, we will strengthen coordination, together with other functional forces to promote propaganda and guide fishermen in using electronic fishing logs to improve the efficiency of management, monitoring and supervision of fishing output, ensuring traceability of seafood origin".

There are many reasons why fishermen are not interested in electronic fishing logs, but the fundamental reason is the fear of hassle and the lack of courage to innovate. To meet the urgent requirements in the roadmap to remove the IUU "yellow card" and modernize fisheries management, there needs to be a strong transformation of each fisherman, first of all, keeping electronic fishing logs to improve transparency in local fishing activities.