Long Thong Ly woke up her five children earlier than usual last Sunday at their Kandal province home, hoping to beat her neighbors to the market so she could buy pork for her family.
“If I don’t rush to the pork stand early, I won’t be able to buy good meat,” she said. “The markets have no more fish I can buy for our daily meals.”
Long Thong Ly is not the only one who has trouble finding fish in the markets. Villagers from Battambang to Kompong Cham to Siem Reap provinces are eating more pork or beef and crocodile farmers are now feeding the hungry reptiles rats instead of fish.
“My family has not eaten fish for many months already,” Long Thong Ly said. “It is so expensive now.”
Fishery officials and specialists warned this week that more action is needed to halt what some have dubbed a “fish crisis.” Fish stocks in the Tonle Sap, the Mekong River and the nation’s lakes are alarmingly low, causing the price of fish to spike in markets across the country.
“In my province, the fish price is three times higher compared to previous years,” Kompong Cham Governor Cheang Am said this week. “It increased too much. We are all concerned for the future losses of fish resources.”
Last year, the price of fish in Kompong Cham averaged $0.75 to $1 per kg, the governor said. Now fish sells for $2.50 to $3 per kg. In comparison, beef and pork average about $2.25 per kg.
“We are facing a huge crisis,” Touch Seang Tana, a fisheries specialist at the Council of Ministers, said this week. “Our people cannot live based on the fish in the river anymore.”
A combination of factors have caused the fish stocks to reach their current paltry levels, he said. Dams in China built over the past decade changed the Mekong’s flow and are responsible for abrupt changes in the water level, which disrupt the fish spawning process, he said.
Increased logging in the Mekong River basin during that time has uprooted the sanctuaries where fish typically lay their eggs. In addition, increased numbers of fishermen, high market demand for fish and poor management of fishing lot concessions have also hurt fish stocks.
To thwart the decline, Touch Seang Tana said the government must encourage people to raise fish in ponds. He also called on the government to ban fishing in several areas of the Tonle Sap for years so the fish stocks can be replenished. Meanwhile, nearly 80 percent of the fish now sold in Cambodian markets are imported from Thailand or Vietnam, Touch Seang Tana said.
Mak Sithirith, director of the Fisheries Action Coalition Team, a group of eight NGOs, agreed with the government fisheries expert.
“We are no longer a fish exporter country,” Mak Sithirith said. “It is so strange and unbelievable.”
He blamed the decrease in fish on widespread illegal fishing and poor management of fishing lot concessions by the government.
Nonetheless, the government says it is taking action to fight illegal fishing and stem the decline in fish stocks. Representatives from five fishery departments met in Kompong Chhnang province this week to discuss saving fish in the Tonle Sap.
In Kompong Cham last week, government authorities burned hundreds of meters of illegal fishing nets to protect fish eggs during the spawning season.
“We all must take action so the fish can survive,” Governor Cheang Am said.
Nao Thouk, director of the fisheries department in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, said that low water levels caused by recent draughts, coupled with illegal fishing, has led to the decline in fish stocks.
“We have caught too many fish, but they are not all gone,” he said. “We will have a crisis if we cannot ban all illegal fishing.”
