Bangkok, The president of the Thai Fisheries Association proposed to upgrade measures to solve the “black-chinned tilapia” crisis by having the government consider it a national agenda to order relevant agencies to integrate solutions to the problem, including relaxing the law to use high-performance equipment before releasing predatory fish.
Mr. Mongkol Sukcharoenkhana, President of the Fisheries Association of Thailand, said that the current problem of the outbreak of the black-chinned tilapia, an invasive alien aquatic animal, is considered very critical. The outbreak has been occurring for 14 years and is a silent threat that destroys young aquatic animals along the coastline, including invading into various water sources, eating all the young aquatic animals.
The Thai Fisheries Association believes that it must be raised to a national agenda, implemented by the government, in which the Prime Minister should assign the Deputy Prime Minister to be the Chairman of the Committee for Solving Problems, the
Minister of Agriculture and Cooperatives to be the Vice Chairman, and the Director-General of the Department of Fisheries to be the Secretary, in order to integrate relevant agencies across ministries, including the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, and the provinces, which are under the Ministry of Interior. Such an operation will allow other agencies to support the Department of Fisheries, and there will be a clear action plan and no individual actions in each province.
The Department of Fisheries must be the main agency in determining plans and guidelines and methods for solving the problem, including possibly using military methods to help in planning. It should also issue a law to relax the law to allow fishermen to use high-performance fishing equipment to catch black-chinned tilapia in rivers, canals and coasts until the black-chinned tilapia numbers decrease, then they can gradually use other tools to clean it up.
Then release other types of
predatory fish to eat the remaining black chin tilapia fry. If you release the predatory fish quickly while there are still a lot of black chin tilapia, you will not be able to eliminate them effectively and it will be a waste of money.
The latest is that Mr. Bancha Sukkaew, Director-General of the Department of Fisheries, is preparing to announce measures to solve the problem of black-chinned tilapia, which is currently spreading in 14 provinces, including Bangkok. The important measure is to accelerate the genetics research project to release black-chinned tilapia with a special chromosome set that is sterile to breed with black-chinned tilapia in the wild to produce sterile offspring, which is believed to be an effective method of control. It will control the spread of Alien Species within 3 years, with the goal of releasing the first set of sterile chromosome fish in December 2024, as well as accelerating the campaign to capture and use them, confirming that black-chinned tilapia is not poisonous, can be
eaten, and tastes better than Nile tilapia.
Source: Thai News Agency