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For the past 30 years, fisheries resources and the marine environment have been seriously degraded through overfishing brought about by a lack of control of fishing capacity that was allowed expand, both in terms of increasing number of fishing vessels and in adopting new technologies, which were not commensurate with the natural productivity of the resources. These challenges provided fertile ground for the proliferation of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing within Thai fisheries waters by both Thai and foreign vessels and outside Thai waters (high seas and fisheries waters of other States) by Thai fishing vessels.
Thailand has built upon the reforms of all dimensions undertaken during nearly the past 3 years, including the reform of legal framework and implementing regulations, the fisheries management limiting the fishing license issuance in compliance with the quantity of aquatic animals, the fleet management putting control over fishing vessels of all sizes and types, the monitoring, control and surveillance through port-in and port-out control. Moreover, for Thai oversea vessels installation of vessel monitoring system (VMS), and especially installation of electronic reporting system (ERS) electronic monitoring system (EM) for oversea fishing fleet, as well as the development of traceability system for catches from Thai-flagged vessel.
Neritic tuna in the Andaman Sea in 2017, there were 12,802 tons of Neritic tuna caught by 4 fishing gears. The main gear was Purse seine caught 12,768 tons while Anchovy falling net, Otter board Trawl, and Squid falling nets caught 24, 6 and 4 tons respectively. Anyway, to study on the length distribution of neritic tuna was done only for purse seine.
During 2011-2015, six Thai tuna longliners operated in the Western coast of the Indian Ocean, but in 2016 - present, Thailand did not have commercial longliner vessels operated in Indian Ocean. In 2017, there was one Thai purse seiner operated only two month in this area. They declared logbook to Department of Fisheries, Thailand. Data from logbook displayed important information of their fishing operation and effort. The fishing operations were recorded 11 times. The major neritic tuna species consisted of kawakawa 13,469 kg and longtail tuna 979 kg. The average percentage composition by weight of kawakawa, longtail tuna, narrow-barred spanish mackerel and other species group (round scad, bigeye scad, Indian mackerel etc.) were 34.76%, 2.53%, 0.16% and 62.56%, respectively. The average CPUE was 3522.82 kg/time.
Foreign tuna fleets unloading in Phuket in 2017, the annual catches were estimated 21,657.59 tonnes. The main species composition were tuna group, billfish group and other species group which 20,714.87, 889.28 and 53.44 tonnes. The main species composition of Tuna group were Skipjack tuna, yellowfin tuna, bigeye tuna, bill fish group (Swordfish, Blue marlin, Indo-Pacific sailfish) and other species group (Oilfish, Dolphin Fish, Wahoo).
