‘BANGUS, tilapia, tulingan! Bili na; bukas wala na ’yan [Milkfish, tilapia, tuna! You buy now; tomorrow these will be gone!],” shouts Arjay Diaz, an ambulant fish vendor, as he vends his fish produce.
A resident of Dasmariñas City, the 27-year-old vendor has been selling fish for 13 years. He wakes up every day around 1 a.m. to buy fish at a fish port in Salinas, now known as Rosario, Cavite.
He had to be early to be among the “early birds” to have a wider variety of fish to choose from and buy, and later sell in his neighborhood.
Using his pedicab, Diaz goes around villages, passing by crowded streets to sell whatever he was able to buy at the fish port.
“Sometimes there are plenty of fish, sometimes there are none. I don’t sell the expensive type. I only sell such kind, like tuna, when someone orders because it is very expensive. I also don’t sell fish that people are not familiar with because they don’t buy them,” he told the BusinessMirror in Filipino.
He said customers are choosy. Besides milkfish and tilapia, only a handful appreciates “exotic” fish like bisugo (threadfin bream) and grouper.
“People are not familiar with these fishes. They just ask a recipe for a delicious dish for them,” he said. “Also, there are fewer fishes now. Only a few are caught, like the threadfin bream and grouper.”
Besides the usual tilapia and milkfish, Diaz buys and sells only galunggong (round scad), tambakol (skipjack tuna), talakitok (trevally), hasa-hasa (short-bodied mackerel) and pusit (squid) from time to time.
With a capital of P5,000, his net income would range from P600 to P800. “The fishes now are getting expensive that’s why I sometimes don’t sell. Before, my capital is only P3,000 and earn a net income of P800,” he said.
Seasonal or going extinct?
Fish is a seasonal commodity, said Lorna Malabanan, 42, of barangay Sampaloc, Talisay, Batangas.
A fish-stall vendor for 20 years now, Malabanan sells fish at the Dasmariñas City Pamilihang Sentral. This time of the year, fishes caught in open waters are scarce, she said.
“During this southwest monsoon, one should not hope [to catch plenty of fish]. A few fish catch during inclement weather result in low supply, especially during typhoons,” Malabanan told the BusinessMirror in Filipino.
On August 17 several kilos of milkfish and live tilapia were on her fish stall. They came from her hometown Talisay in Batangas.
She sells tilapia at P80 to P100 a kilo, and milkfish at P160 to P180 a kilo, depending on the size. The bigger the fish, the higher the price. Other fish venders in the market sell a variety of saltwater fishes like tuna, round scad, skipjack tuna, dalagang bukid (yellowtail fusilier), espada (belt fish), sapsap (small flat fish), travelly, samaral (pinspotted spinefoot), langaray (long-spined glass perchlet), threadfin bream and torsillo (type of barracuda).
The price of the fishes range from as low as P100 a kilo for the lesser known to as high as P200 a kilo for the popular varieties, depending on the size.
Others believe, however, that many saltwater fish, like freshwater fish, are now on the brink of extinction. The dwindling fish catch, they claimed, manifests extinction.
Top fish producer
According to the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), the Philippines is one of the world’s largest fish producers. In 2013 it ranked seventh worldwide.
In 2014 the country produced 4.69 million metric tons (MMT) of fish valued at P237.71 billion.
However, 50 percent of the country’s total fish production, or about 2.34 MMT, are from aquaculture, while 26 percent, or 1.24 MMT, are products of municipal fishing and the remaining 24 percent of 1.1 MMT are products of commercial fishing.
Ironically, however, the poorest of the poor in the Philippines belong to the fishery sector.
Damaged ecosystem
Fernando L. Hicap, chairman of the Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya), said the dwindling fish catch in the Philippines started in the 1970s. Destructive fishing methods like trolls, use of dynamite and cyanide, he said, have damaged the marine ecosystem.
The massive conversion of mangrove forests for aquaculture production aggravated the situation, he added. This resulted in the fewer variety of fishes to choose, he said.
Even in Laguna de Bay, the country’s largest freshwater lake and aquaculture hub, he said, fish catch in open waters have drastically gone down because of the proliferation of fish pens and fish cages.
Laguna Lake Development Authority General Manager Nereus Acosta said fish cages and fish pens occupy around 15,000 hectares of the lake’s total surface area of 90,000 hectares.
“Before, small fishermen could catch 10 kilograms [kg] of fish. Currently, they are lucky if they could catch 3 kg, which is not enough even for the amount they spent for the boat’s gasoline,” Acosta said.
Unsustainable fishing
Director Theresa Mundita S. Lim of the DENR’s Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB) said there are several reasons behind the dwindling fish catch in the Philippines. Besides the unsustainable fishing methods, including illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing, overfishing, overharvesting of other marine resources and harvesting of endangered or threatened marine species, are factors behind the dwindling fish catch.
“If we overharvest, or we harvest even the breeders, we will not allow the fisheries to recover. Also harvesting smaller fish means we are no longer allowing them to grow and eventually breed, which can lead to a crash in the fish catch,” she said.
Lim said another factor is the massive habitat loss.
“The coral-reef destruction, smothering of sea grass beds and corals, brought about by pollution both land-based and water-based, siltation, land reclamation, including island-building, and heavy development in coastal areas, contribute to the degradation of the marine environment,” she said.
Aggravating these factors, she said, are the changing water temperatures and ocean acidification that lead to the diminishing fish stock and eventually, extinction of certain fish species.
“Because threats are multifaceted, we need to address this in an integrated, holistic manner,” she said.
Establishing MPAs
The DENR’s BMB focuses on the establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) networks, along with local government units.
“It is important to identify where our remaining rich marine ecosystems are and secure them so these can continue to be a spawning ground for our important marine and fishery resources and contribute to the recovery of surrounding degraded marine ecosystems,” she said.
The DENR-BMB, she said, is looking at the interconnectivity of the marine ecosystems to develop networks of MPAs that will support every stage of the life cycle of keystone marine species.
“Of course, strengthened enforcement is important. So we must work closely with our BFAR, our Coast Guard and other enforcement agencies, so that while we are protecting [the areas], poaching must also be reduced or eliminated,” she said.
Recognizing that declaring more MPAs reduce fishing ground that affect food and livelihood of small fishers, Lim said there is a need for government to come up with alternative sources of income that are biodiversity-friendly for the communities that will be affected.
“We hope to mobilize bridge financing to support this initiative, while allowing the fisheries and marine resources to recover through the effective management of our MPAs. Awareness raising and social marketing are also a key strategies to gain broader support for a really, successfully functioning national integrated MPAs,” she said.
There are a total of 240 protected areas in the Philippines, 70 of which are national MPAs covering a total of 1.38 million hectares.
Of the 70 MPAs, 33 have proclamations under the National Integrated Protected Areas System Act but only four MPAs out of the 33 are legislated. In addition to the national MPAs, there are also a total of 1,751 local MPAs in various parts of the country as of 2015, Lim said.
Skeptical
Hicap, however, is skeptical about the purpose of declaring MPAs as “no-go zones” for small fishers.
The government, he said, should reserve the 15-kilometer municipal fishing ground, including the MPAs, for the exclusive use of small fishers while strictly preventing commercial fishing vessels from encroaching in the municipal fishing grounds, with impunity.
Prevented fishing in MPAs’ “no-take zones” deprives small fishers their right to benefit from municipal fishing grounds, while large-scale commercial fishing vessels continue fishing expeditions in supposedly protected areas with impunity.
“What happens is that in these MPAs it is the commercial fishers which are benefiting not the small fishermen,” Hicap said in Filipino.
Global trend
Ocean-conservation advocacy group Oceana Philippines Vice President Gloria Estenzo-Ramos said the extinction of fish species is also happening in other parts of the world.
Citing a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, Ramos said global status of fish stocks revealed 89.5 percent are overfished. The report, she said, has confirmed an alarming trend over the years in falling fish stocks—a result of vast overfishing on a global scale. Extinction of a wide variety of fish, she said, is not far from happening because of various factors.
Besides overfishing, she said habitat destruction continues to threaten the extinction of a wide variety of fish species.
“Fish stocks are getting depleted because of overfishing, massive destruction of fish habitats, pollution and land reclamation. Commercial fishing vessels are raiding municipal fishing grounds that is why small fishermen have nothing to catch anymore,” she said, citing the problem besetting the Tañon Strait Protected Seascape.
An important fishing ground and home to a wide variety of marine wildlife, including dolphins and whales, the Tañon Strait is the target of commercial fishing vessels because of poor law-enforcement of the Fisheries Code.
Oceana Philippines, in collaboration with various stakeholders, is pushing for the implementation of the General Management Plan for the Tañon Strait, which separates Negros and Cebu. Tañon Strait is one of the major fishing grounds of Central Visayas. There are about 26,850 fishers operating in the area.
Ramos said the group continues to encourage various stakeholders to come together to protect the ocean. She said people in the communities who would be the first to suffer the consequence of biodiversity loss, such the country’s fresh and saltwater fish, should act to help protect their environment and learn to manage their natural resources.
“People should help protect the ocean. Engage the authorities, the police and local government more,” Ramos, a lawyer, said.
Early this year, Oceana Philippines launched the Ocean Heroes Award to recognize the bravery of individuals who act as protectors of Tañon Strait.
The Philippines is rich in marine biodiversity. It is also one of the countries considered as biodiversity hotspot because of rapid rate of biodiversity loss, including its variety of fishes, whether in inland waters or its municipal fishing ground. Unless the government does something about it, and fast, the fish we have on our table today will be gone tomorrow.