Hạ Long Bay fishermen forced out to make room for tourism (and pollution)
Illegal seafood farms have been relocated. Provincial authorities have collected tonnes of styrofoam buoys and bamboo rafts. The Vietnamese government has welcomed tourists to the bay for years, but it is precisely this sector that causes the greatest environmental damage.
Hanoi (AsiaNews) – The authorities in Quảng Ninh province are scrambling to collect thousands of Styrofoam buoys discarded in Hạ Long Bay and Bai Tu Long Bay by recently seafood farms closed by the government.
Fishing in the two bays was banned five years ago to make room for tourist cruises, which, however, have had an equally (if not more) harmful impact on the environment.
Hạ Long and Cẩm Phả towns, which respectively manage Hạ Long Bay and Bai Tu Long Bay, shut down the farms but did not have any plan to deal with the styrofoam waste that seafood farmers had dumped in the water after relocating, noted Quảng Ninh acting chairman Cao Tường Huy, who ordered that all trash discarded from relocated seafood farms be collected by 28 April.
Fish farms were banned in 2018. Only government-approved fishing and diving activities for tourism using traditional tools were allowed to continue. The goal was to protect the biodiversity of Hạ Long Bay, declared a UNESCO heritage site in 1994. Violators would be punished and their equipment seized and destroyed.
The Hạ Long Bay management board has collected 2,500 cubic metres of styrofoam buoys and 50 pieces of bamboo rafts, while Cẩm Phả, which manages Bai Tu Long Bay, collected more than 250,000 buoys and more than 1,000 bamboo rafts.
The coastline of Quảng Ninh province runs for 250 km, but according to the provincial Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, illegal farms occupy 970 hectares.
Before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, at least SIX million tourists visited Hạ Long Bay and its 2,000 iconic karstic islands and islets every year.
Appreciated for its aesthetic and geomorphological value, Hạ Long means "descending dragons" and the islets are like jewels that the dragons spat out.
According to residents, fish declined over the years due to waste and pollution produced by mass tourism in the bay. The concentration of toxic substances has been increasing along with plastic waste.
According to 2020 data, the Hạ Long Bay area generated 28,283 tonnes of plastic waste each year, with 5,272 tonnes of plastic waste leaked into the ocean. Tourist activities generate 34 tonnes of waste every day.
The Vietnamese government first proposed to relocate the fishing villages inland and then imposed a ban on fishing. Even the United Nations tried to intervene with various awareness projects to reduce tourism-generated plastic.
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02/08/2018 15:38
26/08/2022 11:13
