Abstract
This paper describes the spatial transition of fishery areas and the changes of fishery activities in one specific fishery area in brackish lagoon, locally named Sam-An Truyen, central Vietnam. Fishing by fixed net/gear locally named as Nò Sáo or Chuôm has been practiced around 1960s in a small scale. Since 1980 to 2000, shrimp aquaculture had been introduced and increased. Aquaculture areas have been expanded and formed net-enclosure locally named Chắn Sáo which has functions of aquaculture and natural catch, building up based on fixed net. These fishery areas are inherited among family members or sold to others by local private contract. As a result, actual privatization and segmentation of net-enclosure have formed a highly dense fishery area while fishery right has not been fully practiced and ensured. In the open area of lagoon, illegal and destructive fishery activities are reported. To cope with these issues, fishers who have net-enclosure formed a fishery association locally named Hội Nghề Cá to protect net-enclosures and constrain vandalistic activities. In addition, some waterways in this fishery area were formed by fishers to prevent their aquatic products from being stolen by monitoring boats passing through the waterways. More recently, one policy “Area Planning for Aquaculture of Phu Vang district” was put into effect by the local government in 2008. In the plan, one waterway (Xà Bạc waterway) will be increased in width, and one new waterway will be built until 2012 which affect 6.8 % of net-enclosures located around Tan Duong village. A survey along the planned waterway was done to know the details of effects by new waterway indicating that 64 % of fishers in this area will lose over half of their fishery areas and 17 % will lose over 90 % of their fishery areas.
