Fishy tales: An insight into how the Vietnamese industry compares to Australia's

That was something that sparked the interest of North Queensland fisherman, Mark Ahern, after a recent trip to Vietnam to attend the 2016 Vietfish conference.

Mark Ahern says a recent trip to Vietnam has made him see things differently. He was impressed with the hygiene standards of the Vietnamese fish processing factories.

The conference brought together more than16,000 visitors from around the world to network, see the latest technology and discuss the future of the fishing sector.

One area that really caught the Mackay-based fisherman's eye was just how good his Vietnamese counterparts were at value-adding to their seafood.

He said while Australian seafood was recognised as some of the best in the world, the industry could do more in the space of value-adding to its products once they were out of the water and in the shop.

"Just their beautiful packaging of prawns … different tastes and the way they add to it be it sweet and sour [sauce], they do a fantastic job of that and we could certainly learn a lot from them," Mr Ahern said.

Mr Ahern was so inspired by what he saw, he now planned to value-add more to his own products.

"There are a few things I picked up there, particularly in the way of showing our seafood, they show it beautifully over there when they have it on display," he said.

"In a lot of the places a lot of it is live and fresh and kicking but the stuff that they have value-added to is just presented magnificently and we have got to get into that so people can walk into the shop and go 'wow'."

However, with many issues still being raised about the regulation of the Australian fishing industry, he conceded it was difficult for many fisherman to consider diversification right now.

"I think at the moment we have a bit of a depressed fishing industry," Mr Ahern said.

"Over there people rely on commercial fisherman to get out and catch food and I'm afraid in Australia we have not quite got that through to people that they need us to catch fish for them to eat."

Vietnamese seafood processing

At the start of his trip, Mr Ahern visited a Vietnamese fish farm, which he described as "staggering".

"To go there first up and to go out and feed fish in a pond that held 600 tonne of fish was incredible," Mr Ahern said.

"Boats leave every day from this place and they head to the factory.

"I was on board the boat that took the fish down, they unloaded 17 tonne of fish while I was there and it goes into the factory, and all the live fish is exported."

He was also astounded by the hygiene standards of the commercial fishing industry.

"The cleanliness and hygiene of the place was unbelievable … we had to get dressed up and — no joke — the only thing that was showing was our eyes," Mr Ahern said.

"When you go into one of these factories you wash your feet twice before you get to go in there, you are decked out in full hygiene gear and you touch nothing unless you have gloves on."

However, Mr Ahern found the amount of water pollution concerning.

"It scared me to have a look at the amount of rubbish that was laying around and you do wonder … where it [water] went into the farm it is not filtered and yet these fish survive," he said.

"It does make me wonder what the quality of the fish is like but later on I tried a bit of Spanish mackerel out of the ocean and some wild caught prawns and they were not too bad."

How to fillet a fish — fast

Of course a major part of processing seafood is filleting fish, and Mr Ahern was astounded at the speed of Vietnamese workers.

He took a video of one Vietnamese man filleting fish at an exceptional rate.

"That guy was just an absolute pleasure to watch, he was doing a fish in 10 seconds, and for the 45 minutes I was there in the filleting room he never stopped," Mr Ahern said.

The fisherman conceded he was nowhere near that fast when he filleted his own fish.

"I tell you I wouldn't hold a feather up to that guy, but I'd certainly give him a job any day of the week." Source: abc.net