Fisheries Agency,Ministry of Agriculture

Fishing vessels mainly conduct their fishing activities at sea. Thus, in fisheries management, it is most important to get hold of the activities of fishing vessels at sea. Taiwan is located at the junction between the tropic and the sub-tropic, and various sea currents meet at its surrounding seas. and with such natural phomena, the fishery and marine features in Taiwan’s coastal and offshore seas not only vary seasonally, but also have the charactistics of complex diversity in the variation of fisheries resources. It is somewhat embarrassing to say that due to lack of complete information on the activities of fishing vessesls, for long there has been insufficient knowledge on the fisheries status in Taiwan’s coastal and offshore seas.    

Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) is a GPS-based device, which records the positions of vessel in coordinates once every 3 minutes and have them stored in the memory chips of the device. VDR was developed by the National Cheng Kung University in 2006 as commissioned by the Council of Agriculture. VDR is required for installing on fishing vessels since 2007. When a fishing vessel takes fuel at supply station the VDR will record its voyage information, and based on the duration of its voyage and the power of its engines, fuel consumption of the vessel can be calculated, and the maximum quantity of diesel permissible for preferential price can then be assessed.  

Apart from its function of recording the voyage information of fishing vessels serving as a basis for fuel supply at preferential price, the information recorded by VDR, such as vessel positions, speeds, and courses, can also serve as important data for fisheries management. Advanced technology has thus been introduced using the voyage information recorded by VDR in the work of fisheries management. It is anticipated that fishermen will properly use and maintain the VDR, in order to achieve a 3-win situation, protecting the interests of fishermen in fuel subsidy, conservation of fisheries resources, as well as better fisheries management of the government.