With the coastline of more than 3.260 km long, stretching the country, Vietnam has great potential for marine economic development, fisheries logistics serving for offshore fishing. Currently, there are 95.609 fishing vessels in the country operating in the South China Sea and South West Sea. In particular, the number of offshore fishing vessels is over 14.000, with a capacity from 90 CV to 360CV and there are regularly about 300,000 to 500,000 fishermen clinging to boats, to sea. They focus especially in fishing ground of Paracel and Spratly Southwest Sea. Although known as offshore fishing, these vessels can only exploit in the area of surrounding of the South China Sea, cannot afford to go fishing on the oceans in long day. The scientists completed a study, survey and they shocked that fuel oil for lighting and luring seafood accounted for over 50% of the total operating costs of each fishing round. Traditional technology with incandescent lamps, halogen, fluorescent, compact, etc consumes a huge amount of energy, increases the cost burden for fishermen.
Fishing vessels of light grids, fishing for cuttlefish usually have high capacity, go offshore. These ships have two lighting rigs on two sides to lure fish, cuttlefish when fishing at night. Every night, to lighting up these lamps, each ship has to consume 100-200 liters of diesel. It's not a small cost in total cost of a trip of the fishermen.
Rising oil prices have caused hundreds of offshore fishing vessels is inactive due to the losses of the fishermen. Finding solutions to help fishermen to adapt to higher oil prices is very urgent at the moment.
According to data from previous investigations of the Department of Fisheries (Ministry of Fisheries before) for fishing 1 kg seafood, fishermen have to spend from 1.533-1.735 VND, equivalent to 0.374 to 0.423 kg of diesel. (The calculation moment when the price of diesel in 2007 was only 5.500 VND/liter).
Thus, when fishing 1 kg seafood, fishermen have to pay in the budget through petrol price by about 605 VND, equivalent to 15-17% of the product price.
And when diesel prices rise above 18.000 VND/liter as the current moment (2011), the ship with a capacity of 350-370CV (a fishing trip in 25-30 days), "eats from 5.000-6.000 liters of oil, causing "extreme losses" for them after each trip. Many fishermen are considering to change to other occupations (rising oil prices, offshore fishing boats....lying in shore). To overcome the excessive oil consumption, LED (Light Emitting Diode), a new type of lighting source, with high energy efficiency and long life are used to replace traditional lamps, the use of LED are applied in fishing in a number of countries with developing fisheries such as Japan, South Korea, etc.
The central problem of the project is the use of LED lights to replace the traditional lighting system (low efficiency, much consuming oil) for fishing vessels in Ninh Thuan. LED is a modern lighting product, high lighting efficiency and long life, environment-friendly, energy-saving. Lighting system with LED lights will bring the following benefits:
? With the same level of lighting, LED lighting helps to reduce about 50% of diesel compared with the case using the old lighting system with incandescent lamps, fluorescent lamps and Metal Halide.
? The reduction in diesel consumption directly contributes to reduce emissions of gases causing the greenhouse effect, contributing to environmental protection, and cost reduction for fishermen during the occupation.
The project chooses the areas including Thanh Hai, Tri Hai commune, Ninh Hai district to piloting LED (Light Emitting Diode) lights in fishing for this is the region with many fishing vessels combined light, but lighting equipment is outdated, consumes much oil.
The project aims to (i) raise awareness for the community in using LED efficiently in fisheries contributes to replace traditional lights to save energy and contributes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit climate change (ii) pilot to use LED lights in the fisheries replacing traditional lights contributes to enhance fishing productivity, reduce the use of oil for lighting in the traditional lights (iii) summarize the experienced lessons, share the achievements of the project to the community and relevant parties.