All fishing boat operators must register their catches and trips in a log book provided to them starting next month, said Malaysia’s Deputy Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister Datuk Mohd Johari Baharom.
He said the particulars would be recorded by Malaysian Fisheries Development Authority (LKIM) officers to prevent cheating in the amount of revenue garnered from each fishing trip.
The standard operating procedure (SOP) will ensure that the number of landings commensurate with the diesel quota set for each category of fishing gear licensed, he told a news conference on the implementation of the SOP on deep-sea fish landings here today.
“This procedure is being implemented to prevent leakage in fish landings and avoid undeclared catches. The information will enable LKIM to determine the amount of subsidised diesel to be allocated to a fishing vessel.
“After this, the amount of diesel allocated to each vessel will depend on the amount of catches made. We have set one ton of fish to be equivalent to one litre of diesel,” he said.
He said there were many irregularities in deepwater fishing operations throughout the country as could be seen in Class C2 (deep sea) landing data this year where 1,536 vessels brought in only 112,444.59 tonnes of fish.
“With the number of fishing vessels operating throughout the country, the landings should have hauled 384,000 tonnes of fish with each vessel bringing in 250 tonnes of fish a year,” he said.
Mohd Johari said the highest number of irregularities occurred in Kelantan where 372 vessels caught only 9,405,7 tonnes of fish, and this was absurd.
“I am going to Kelantan soon to meet deepwater fishing boat operators and ask bogus operators to stop the fraudulent activities as we will not compromise on this anymore,” he added.
2011 The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad