In a small fishing village in south-central Vietnam, merchants gather on the beach each morning to buy fresh seafood from fisherman the moment they make it ashore. 

Mui Ne, the easternmost ward of Phan Thiet City, which is the coastal capital of Binh Thuan Province, is located 22 kilometers from the city center and more than 200 kilometers northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.

The coastline that stretches between Phan Thiet’s center and Mui Ne is home to hundreds of beach resorts, restaurants, bars, shops, and cafés that have sprung up since tourism in the township first experienced a boom in the mid-1990s, thanks tourists flocking to the area to see a solar eclipse on October 24, 1995.

While tourism has transformed Mui Ne’s economy, its residents, who have for generations earned their living from fishing activities and seafood trades, have remained faithful to their age-old coastal lifestyle.

Every morning at sunrise, hundreds of merchants line up along one of Mui Ne’s beaches in orderr to purchase fresh batches of seafood as they arrive on shore.

Seafood is taken fresh from large fishing vessels anchored far from shore to avoid grounding and transported to the beach by hand-paddled basket boat.

Prices are unsurprisingly cheap. Whole-shell scallops, the area’s seasonal catch, can be bought for as low as VND4,000 (US$0.17) per kilogram, or cheaper if the buyer is a good bargainer.

Squids, mantis shrimp, and saltwater crabs are also traded at the makeshift fish market, which is busiest in the early morning and becomes less crowded as the clock ticks toward noon.

The scent of the sea wafts through the air as metric tons of seafood lines the sands against a backdrop of crashing waves and hurried merchants.

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