As of early 2026, Vietnam's electronic Catch Documentation and Traceability system - eCDT - is running at 94 designated fish landing points nationwide, up from 62 in mid-2024, according to Vietnamese state media reporting on the rollout. Buyers I work with sourcing wild-caught squid, octopus, and marine finfish from Vietnam have started asking what eCDT actually changes for them. The short answer: it digitizes a paper process that used to be the weakest link in proving a shipment's catch origin - but it's still mid-rollout, and that matters for how much weight to put on it today.
What eCDT actually does
eCDT replaces the paper logbook and port-arrival paperwork that fishing vessels previously filed by hand with a digital record: vessel departure and arrival, catch volume by species, and the landing port, all logged electronically and linked to the vessel's monitoring system (VMS) data. The point is to close the gap between what a vessel reports catching and what actually gets landed and sold into the supply chain - the exact gap that made paper-based catch certificates easy to falsify and hard for an importer to verify independently.
For a buyer, the practical output is a digital chain from vessel to landing port to processor that can, in principle, be checked against the catch certificate a supplier provides - rather than taking the paper certificate on faith.
The rollout is real but still uneven
According to reporting on provincial implementation, more than 99% of vessels 15 meters or longer now have VMS equipment installed, but several thousand vessels still show VMS signal gaps of six hours or more, and several hundred have gone dark for ten or more consecutive days. Some coastal provinces - Quang Ninh among them - have set their own internal targets to reach full digital traceability of fishing vessel logs by mid-2026, which tells you the rollout is not yet uniform nationwide.
That unevenness is the key thing for a buyer to price into their risk assessment right now: eCDT coverage at a landing port your supplier uses is a meaningfully positive signal, but it isn't yet a national guarantee. Ask which specific port and province your catch was landed through, not just whether 'Vietnam has eCDT.'
Why this is tied to the EU yellow card, and why that doesn't touch farmed species
eCDT is one of five pillars in Vietnam's response to the European Commission's IUU 'yellow card' warning, alongside fleet management, monitoring and surveillance, traceability, and enforcement - with the stated goal of getting the yellow card lifted by the end of 2026. This is a wild-capture fishery issue specifically; it has no bearing on farmed pangasius, farmed shrimp, or other aquaculture exports, which sit under a completely separate certification chain (aquaculture health certificates, not catch documentation).
If your purchase orders are entirely farmed species, eCDT progress is a market-reputation signal worth tracking, not a paperwork requirement that touches your shipments. If you're buying wild-caught squid, octopus, or marine finfish, it's directly relevant to the document chain you should be requesting.
What to ask your supplier now
For wild-caught product, ask whether the landing port used for that catch is one of the 94 eCDT-enabled ports, and ask for the vessel registration alongside the catch certificate rather than the certificate alone. A supplier who can point to a specific eCDT-logged landing, rather than a generic assurance that 'the system covers it,' is giving you something you can actually follow up on. Given that VMS signal gaps are still common on a meaningful share of the fleet, a catch certificate tied to a vessel with a clean, continuous VMS record is a stronger signal of legitimate origin than one tied to a vessel with reporting gaps - worth asking your supplier to confirm either way.
The system is a genuine upgrade in traceability infrastructure, and it's moving in the direction that matters for anyone buying wild-caught Vietnamese seafood. It just isn't finished yet, so treat it as one more thing to verify specifically rather than a blanket assurance to accept at face value.
Sourcing wild-caught squid and octopus from Vietnam?
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