With simple equipment, fishermen are catching whale sharks from the East Sea.

Fishermen are catching whale sharks from the East Sea

Nguyen Duc Thinh, a fisherman from Khanh Hoa Province said he caught four tonnes of whale sharks and could earn VND60-70m in profits.

Fishermen mostly go to the waters around Spratly and Paracel islands for this kind of fish. Because the whale sharks only eat live bait, fishermen do not prepare the baits at home. They often jump into the sea to catch live fish to be the bait when they arrived at the fishing spots.

Some whale sharks are so heavy that the fishermen have to use winches to pull them on board. According to the fishermen, the fins are most valuable part. A kilo of meat is sold for VND13,000 but a fin costs VND400,000 to VND500,000 (USD18-22) a kilo and sometimes, the prices can go even higher.

Thinh went on to say that they had seen a lot of Chinese ships recently near Spratly Islands. He said, "We often fish three to four nautical miles away from them and have to be on our guard or else they'll come and ruin our bait."

Whale sharks mostly live near the coastlines of Quang Ngai, Binh Dinh and Phu Yen provinces, the sea near Spratly and Paracel islands the areas near Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. The World Wildlife Fund lists the whale shark as an endangered species.