Who Owns Cambodia’s Sea?

While the majority of vessels are Vietnamese, Thai-flagged boats and even some Chinese vessels have also been spotted illegally fishing in Cambodian waters.

Though Mother Nature Cambodia is the first Cambodian organization to expose this issue using verifiable data, Cambodians — especially those in coastal areas and on the islands of Kampot, Kep, Sihanoukville, and Koh Kong — have known about this for years. It’s an open secret among fishers, islanders, and coastal communities who have watched foreign vessels loot their livelihoods while the authorities remain silent.

Shortly after the release of our video, a few of the remaining independent Khmer-language media outlets picked up the story — and it quickly went viral across Cambodia’s Facebook ‘world’, still the country’s most popular social media platform. This is proof that this issue is not just of concern to an environmental NGO like ours, but to Cambodians from all walks of life who want to see an end to this illegal and destructive practice.

The ongoing illegal plundering of Cambodia’s marine resources by foreign fishing vessels is not merely a result of negligence — it is a deliberate, state-enabled crime.

At the center of this issue is corruption, particularly involving the Tea family, which includes the former and current Ministers of Defense and the former and current heads of the Cambodian Navy. For over a decade, this powerful family has been known to facilitate and profit from the unauthorized entry of foreign fishing boats into Cambodian waters.

In 2013, the European Union issued a red card to Cambodia due to its failure to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. This sanction — which remains in place over a decade later — effectively bans Cambodian seafood exports to the EU. A key reason for this sanction is the government’s clear lack of political will to stop the illegal foreign vessels, many of which use destructive, banned fishing equipment such as trawlers that destroy entire marine habitats.

Instead of taking action to:

• Allow marine ecosystems to recover,
• Reopen negotiations with the EU and other markets to lift the red card,
• Support local fishing communities in rebuilding their economies,

the regime chooses to maintain the status quo. Why? Because it allows those in power to enrich themselves, just as they have done in other sectors — forestry, land, mining — at the expense of the country, its people, and its future.

Mother Nature Cambodia, standing with countless Cambodian citizens, demands the following:

• The Hun family regime must immediately stop the illegal practice of allowing foreign fishing vessels into Cambodian waters, and launch a full investigation into the corrupt officials who have profited from this national betrayal.
• The government must work with local fishing communities, civil society groups, other political parties, independent experts, academia, and international NGOs to enforce a permanent and effective ban on foreign fishing vessels. Only through inclusive, transparent cooperation can we begin to reverse years of destruction and rebuild the health of our marine ecosystems, which directly supports thousands of Cambodian families.
• We call on the European Union to hold Vietnam accountable. The EU must urgently engage in direct talks with the Vietnamese government and make it clear that unless Vietnam ends the practice of allowing its fleet to illegally fish in Cambodian waters, the current yellow card should be upgraded to a red card. A warning that stretches beyond seven years without any meaningful change has become meaningless.