The Fisheries Department passed a requirement for fishing vessels with permission to catch fish and crustaceans to have an identification code painted on their sides before the end of May.
Fisheries Department Director-General Dr. Adisorn Promthep, said that the requirement came into effect on April 1st when it was published in the Royal Gazette, reported NNT.
The move is to solve issues related to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU). It will also help identify boats that could be involved with human trafficking and allow anyone on a coded boat to be able to report to others which vessel they are on. The codes, which must be visible on the side of the vessel, consist of four sets of letters and numbers.
For example, the letter ‘T’ of the code ‘T-M-245-B’ indicates that the boat should be operating in the Gulf of Thailand while the second letter ‘M’ means that the vessel weighs at least 30 but less than 60 gross tons.
The number ‘245’ is the registration number and the letter ‘B’ is used to indicate that the particular boat is equipped with a seine net. All legal fishing vessels must now have such a code painted on the side.
