News Forum - 2 Phuket restaurants busted with protected marine life

[Thaiger]

In Phuket, two floating restaurants have been busted possessing protected marine life in violation of environmental laws. The Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR) inspected floating restaurants in Phuket on Friday to check whether they had protected marine life and found a stash. Social media posts shared the findings online. The DMCR inspection found …

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[Ramanathan.P]

Just curious....why these two restaruants and the owners were not named when it was caught red handed with solid evidence.......could it be that these restaurants are floating on the sea where the authorities don't have any juristiction to arrest and take action?????

[Chatogaster]

7 hours ago, Thaiger said:

The possession of protected marine life by these restaurants is a violation of Thai law. The DMCR is responsible for enforcing the law and protecting marine life.

 

That quoted part is mostly true, but it's also very close to being deceptive.

To see why there's indeed a potential violation of Thai law, the first crucial realization needed is that the statement is referring to restaurants in Phuket specifically.

Next, the tacit assumption that they (the fishes, not the restaurants) were caught locally has to be taken for granted. 

For the final step, its has to be realized that even though Thai law protects just a score or so of species (almost none of them being marine life) at a national level, the DMCR is not just authorized to uphold the law. It's actually authorized to introduce new local laws at a provincial level, which includes giving some marine species protection status via local regulations. Phuket has the most of such regulations, so it's good to be a Phuket fish. Other fishes are not so lucky.

That all kind of makes sense in retrospect, but I just spent 20 minutes to make sense of the quote because it is dubious. No seemingly straight-forward quote should result in that waste, hence the "nearly deceptive"-qualification.

PS: if some restaurant imports e.g. some parrot fishes from a Thai province in which DMCR has not given them protection status, they should be fine. However, if you own a restaurant in Phuket and (imported) parrot fish is on the menu: keep a copy of all orders & bills!