Depleted coastal fishing grounds and Chinese incursions have made life harder for Vietnam’s struggling fishermen. In a cell at Tanjung Pinang in Riau, Indonesia, 64-year-old Vietnamese fisherman Nguyen Van Tu struggles alone with aching legs. He has not been found guilty of any crime, but has been detained for more than 20 months. In the summer of 2020, the pair of fishing vessels Tu worked on were caught illegally casting their trawling nets in Indonesian waters. This was Tu’s first trip on the blue wooden vessels. Before that, he spent more than three years working on a similar pair of trawlers in the South China Sea. “Because the nets near the Vietnamese shore were empty, I had to look for vessels that went further. Sometimes they go into the waters of Malaysia and Indonesia,” Tu said. Under Indonesian law, hired fishermen are not punished and are often released after a month of detention. However, Tu can’t afford the plane ticket home and has been stuck in the Indonesian prison. There are hundreds of other Vietnamese fishermen like Tu languishing in prisons across the Asia-Pacific region while their impounded fishing vessels fall into disrepair at ports, according to a report by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF). The Vietnam Coast Guard’s website states that from 2017 to 2020, thousands of fishermen on more than 1,000 Vietnamese fishing boats were detained by the forces of other countries. In 2017, Vietnam had its first warning from the European Commission (EC), as part of its efforts to combat unreported and unregulated fishing activities (IUU). Officially, this is referred to as a “yellow card.” The EC’s warning was a reaction after several Vietnamese fishing vessels were caught in foreign waters, where they do not have a right to fish. The decision does not, at this stage, entail any measures affecting trade, but all seafood shipments originating from Vietnam are inspected when exported to the EU market, causing difficulty for exporters because of lengthy customs clearances and high export costs. The desperation of Vietnamese fishermen, imprisoned for months in cells abroad, underscores the human rights abuses committed by vessel owners, and exposes the unsustainable exploitation of Vietnam’s fishing industry ― the world’s fourth-largest seafood exporter. Not only has the South China Sea become a hotbed of tension over sovereignty disputes among the 10 countries and territories in Asia for decades, now its ecosystem, which includes Vietnamese waters, is also on the verge of collapse. In June 2020, a wooden boat left Kien Giang province on Vietnam’s Mekong Delta with 18 crew members including Tu, heading to the south of the South China Sea. On this voyage, it was accompanied by a smaller ship. After more than three days, they reached the waters off Indonesia. At this time, the captain turned off their satellite-positioning device to escape the notice of the Vietnamese authority’s tracking service. Since 2018, Vietnam has mandated that ship owners and captains keep satellite-positioning devices turned on around the clock while fishing offshore, a move to curb IUU fishing and get the European Commission’s yellow card on Vietnamese seafood lifted. With the tracker off, the captain ordered his crew to cast out the net. They were seeking a high-value catch such as tuna, mackerel, snapper, grouper, lobster and sea cucumber. Tu said he did not know the two vessels had sailed into the Indonesian Exclusive Economic Zone until they were surrounded by Indonesian coast guard vessels. “The two ships operated in parallel with each other, pulling the net, several kilometers long, behind them. The meshes were very tiny, so it captured all creatures: squid, lobster, tortoise, turtle, big fish, baby fish, even coral,” said Tu, while he was locked alone in a tiny room due to suspicion of leprosy. The detained fishermen are still allowed to use their phones and can take walks in the prison at fixed hours of the day. One of Tu’s compatriots lent Tu his phone to talk to this reporter. “Sometimes the captains were fascinated by following schools of fish and going into other waters without notifying the crew,” he recalled. “Fish in the waters of Indonesia and Malaysia are more numerous and larger. Fish in the sea of Vietnam only weigh 1-3kg, while there, the fish are 6-7kg or more,” he said. The attraction of the lucrative fishing grounds pulled the fishermen away from Vietnam’s waters. The ships and their crew worked day after day at sea. The mother ship Tu worked on could carry roughly 200 tons of fish.