Thailand - National Report 2019

Thailand has advance for implementing a comprehensive system to combat IUU fishing. It started to take a reforms 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. Thailand has implemented PSM and assigned 19 PSM ports for port entry of foreign vessel. 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.
In 2018, Thailand had no fishing vessel operated in high sea of IOTC competent. Thailand had only domestic purse seiner fishery in the Andaman sea. Their operated the fishing from shores are 10 to 30 nautical miles and depth of water range from 20-80 m. The average catch rate was 31.16 ton/day. The average percentage composition of Round scads 31.34 %, followed by Indian mackerel 13.04%, Neritic tuna 11.14%, Big-eye scad 9.36%, King mackerel 0.35% and other species 34.78%. The average CPUE were 0.99, 0.41, 0.35, 0.30, 0.01 and 1.10 ton/day, respectively. For average percentage composition of Neritic tuna were Eastern little tuna 46.80 %, Longtail tuna 26.16%, Frigate tuna 16.82% and Bullet tuna 10.22%, respectively. Foreign tuna fleets unloaded at 4 province of Thailand (Phuket, Samut Prakarn, Bangkok, Samut Sakhon). The annual catches were estimated 57,897.35 tonnes. All of them were caught by foreign fishing vessel those operated in the Indian Ocean. The main species composition were Skipjack tuna included yellowfin tuna, bigeye tuna, Swordfish, Blue marlin and other species which were 69.05%, 23.32%, 6.52%, 0.56%, 0.20% and 034%, respectively.
At Present, DOF is launch authorizing Thai-flagged overseas fishing vessels. Currently, there has been applications from begin with Thai-flagged overseas fishing fleet. These vessels operate in SIOFA area and target demersal fish species. No application has been submitted for vessels operating in the IOTC area.