On Monday, September 25th, 2023, at Mae Klong Fishery Cooperative Limited, Mae Klong Subdistrict, Mueang District, Samut Songkhram Province, the TSFR Working Group in collaboration with the Department of Fisheries and the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources Organized a workshop to develop guidelines for endangered, threatened and protected species (ETP species) during trawl fisheries.
The TSFR has discussed with government agencies, the Department of Fisheries, the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources including Researchers and related private sector agencies. Therefore, there is a desire to organize a workshop to develop guidelines for endangered, threatened, and protected aquatic animals. During trawl fishing with trawl, fishermen choose the area where trawl fishing is the main of gear are the upper Gulf of Thailand area and some southern regions, such as fishermen representatives from Samut Sakhon Province, Samut Prakan Province, Prachuap Khiri Khan Province, Fisherman's Association Ban Laem District, Songkhla Province, etc., The results from the workshop on the issue of ETP Species included information on sightings of ETP species, impacts of fishing on ETP Species, and animal rescue including various suggestions from the meeting will be used to prepare a report on the trawl fishery to ETP Species and create a manual for the trawl fishery, In addition, it will be used as data for evaluating the progress of the project with the evaluation agency (MarinTrust) at the end of 2023
By organizing this activity fishermen provided additional information. In the trawl fishery, most of the dolphins were found in Chumphon province, and in some parts of Samut Songkhram and Samut Sakhon, turtles, and whale sharks have also been found at times when fishing. However, fishermen try to avoid fishing in areas where ETP species have been found and may still not understand the reason to record or report sightings of ETP species to government agencies, it's has also proposed ways to correct fishing operations that may be infected with ETP species, such as using reflective-collar fishing gear, making nets an additional outer cover to prevent dolphins from biting the net, etc.
