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DAVAO CITY—Boats
deployed to marine hotspots in the country have
confirmed both intrusion by big Taiwanese fishing boats
and poaching by local fishermen inside protected marine
areas and fish sanctuaries, according to the Bureau of
Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR).
Benjo
Tabios, BFAR central office assistant director, said
boats guarding the eastern side of Mindanao, for
instance, had occasions of near encounters with big
Taiwanese fishing boats.
“Unfortunately, the Taiwanese boats often slip away from
sight and cannot be chased,” Tabios said, saying that
the Taiwanese fishing boats
usually leave a safe distance with the BFAR boats.
Tabios said the BFAR boats run at fast speeds of 26
knots “but if they [Taiwanese boats] keep at least four
hours of distance, it is already difficult to chase
them.”
Some 14
“state-of-the-art,” or computer-aided boats, and about
120 other smaller boats have been deployed by the BFAR
to the marine hot spots, usually with frequent reports
of overfishing and dynamite and other illegal-fishing
activities.
The
boats were purchased since six years ago, and were
deployed four years ago. These are being commanded by
members of the Coast Guard, he said. The government
spent more than P100 million to buy the boats.
Hotspots
are usually in the border of
Mindanao with
Indonesia, the southern part of the Moro Gulf and in
Eastern Mindanao, where, he said, the boats occasionally
spotted Taiwanese fishing vessels.
He said
many marine hotspots change “because poaching is also
seasonal as production also changes.” He added: “That’s
why we deploy the ships every now and then, where the
need is.”
The
country has more than 300 fish sanctuaries and marine
parks, which have become attractions for poaching due to
the increasing fish population around these protected
marine areas.
In the
Davao Gulf area, for example, Tabios said the “resources
have returned, with about 6-percent growth rate in
marine resources in the last three years.”
In the
300 fish sanctuaries and marine parks nationwide,
monitoring of marine-life population indicated a growth
rate of 60 percent last year, and expected to grow by
another 20 percent this year, Tabios said. |
