More than 20 tons of fishes were released in Tien river on March 5^th 2015 in Phu Tan district - An Giang province. This program was jointly organized by An Giang Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Phu Tan People’s Committee and  An Giang Association of Aquaculture and Seafood Processing in order to regenerate and conserve natural fisheries resources and to raise people’s awareness of exploitation of fisheries resources which are now becoming exhausted.

Attending the fish releasing ceremony were staffs and researchers from “Community Empowerment for An Integrated Water Management in An Giang Province, Mekong Delta” project.

The results of project research in 2013 indicated that the current fisheries resources were severely declined in Vam Nao in particular and in Mekong Delta in general. There are some following main causes:

•  Climate change
•  Up stream’s influence on the flow and fishery
•  Increase in population and people’s demand; unstable livelihood; lack of information and knowledge.
•  Narrow living environment of fishery caused by dikes.
•  Overuse of chemicals and fertilizers
•  Poor awareness in protecting environment and local resources

These information was shared with local people by Vam Nao monitoring river group and Thai Baan researchers in My Hoa 3 hamlet at the launching ceremony “Releasing fish for renewable fisheries resources” which was promoted through various propaganda activities like Forum Theater. Apart from watching play with the topic “abandon destructive fishing equipments”, the audiences were invited to replace actors and directly give better solutions on the stage.

Besides launching ceremony, WARECOD supplied 2 tons of fishes for the program and directly released fishes into Tien river with the two communities.