Stop killing baby fish, southern fishers cruise in to petition Bangkok

Traveling by water over a week from their home ports in the south, a group of small-scale anglers arrived at parliament today – World Oceans Day – with a petition to stop Big Fishing from catching small and immature fish. 

Members of Thai Sea Watch, the Federation of Local Fisher Folks Association, and others arrived by boat to hand lawmakers a petition calling for the government to take action against major fishing operations. Among the consequences of the practice has been a significant drop in mackerel populations in the past few years – something they said “destroyed a billion-baht worth economic opportunities.”

“Previously, in Thailand, we had a yearly production of over 100,000 tons of mackerel,” said Wichoksak Narongpairee, Thai Sea Watch president. “But in the past four to five years, mackerel has been drastically reduced to tens of thousands…