Environmental Justice

Fishy delivery: Thai protesters unload invasive fish at government’s doorstep

For the second time this year, desperate fish farmers travelled hundreds of kilometres to Bangkok with unusual cargo: heaps of the tiny fish destroying their livelihoods.

By
Pratch Rujivanarom

Published 20 March 2025
3 min read

Bangkok – Hundreds of aquaculture farmers and fishermen dumped big piles of blackchin tilapia in front of the Government House on Tuesday, demanding stronger action against the invasive fish that has devastated coastal provinces.

“This is the second time that people affected by blackchin tilapia have had to travel to Bangkok to let the government know about our losses and damages,” said Panya Tokthong, a farmer from Samut Songkhram representing the network of affected people across 19 provinces.

Recent measures announced by the Department of Fisheries include releasing native predatory sea bass and deploying fishing vessels with specialized nets, but many local farmers remain skeptical about the effectiveness of these late-stage interventions.

Demands from affected communities

Panya said the group wanted to remind the government about the seriousness of the blackchin tilapia invasion and call for urgent action.

Their demands include appointing an independent committee to identify those responsible, implementing a ten-year eradication plan, designating affected areas as disaster zones for compensation purposes, and holding those responsible financially accountable for damages.

The invasive blackchin tilapia first appeared in Thailand around 2010, reportedly imported by a large food company for experimental breeding before escaping into the wild.

Fisheries official: “We will overcome”

At Tuesday’s protest, Bancha Sukkaew, the director-general of the Fisheries Department, was the only senior official to engage with the demonstrators. No Cabinet members attended to receive the group’s petition directly.

Bancha informed the media that the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives had previously formed an investigative committee to determine the origin of the blackchin tilapia invasion. However, the committee’s findings were inconclusive.

He also noted that the ministry had ordered the Fisheries Department to purchase 3.5 million tons of blackchin tilapia as a remedy for affected farmers. Additionally, the ministry was awaiting a new round of 200-million-baht budget from the Budget Bureau to continue blackchin tilapia eradication measures by releasing predatory fish.

“I am sure that we will overcome the blackchin tilapia problem eventually, like what we did with the spreading of golden apple snails in the past. These snails were so problematic, but we found a way to control and take benefits from them, and now we have to import more of them for consumption,” he said.

Bancha neither received the network’s petition nor promised to implement their demands.

Opposition party steps in

In the government’s stead, representatives of the opposition party, led by People’s Party MP Wiroj Lakkhanaadisorn, received the petition from the protesters and vowed that they would use all parliamentary means to push forward mitigation measures against the blackchin tilapia epidemic.

Sutin Onfung, an affected shrimp farmer from Bangkok’s Bang Khun Thian District, said the blackchin tilapia has caused financial damage to his shrimp farm business, with income losses exceeding 200,000 – 300,000 baht annually since the invasion affected his community three years ago.

“All these years, no one has come to help us. We, the shrimp farmers, are living in despair,” Sutin said. “We want the Prime Minister and the government to take our problems seriously by providing affected people with proper compensation and holding the company behind all this mess accountable for their actions.”