Fishing is an age-old food-gathering activity of our cavemen ancestors that is totally dependent on the bounties of nature, but is increasingly no longer enough to feed an increasing population, thus, there must be an urgent drive to go back to Research Development and Extension (RD&E) to produce fish in “factories,” a revolutionary paradigm shift from traditional fish catching.
Don’t teach fishing, it’s now destructive? An age-old adage goes “giving someone a piece of fish will only last him a day, so teach him how to fish to last him a lifetime.” Although this proverb remains true in principle, literally it no longer holds true in reality today.
Average fish catch has been declining steadily, despite the fact we are an archipelago having among the biggest territorial waters and the world’s largest marine biodiversity. A study by the Fisheries Center of the University of British Columbia of Canada said that, while Philippine population increased by 5.4 percent from 1990 to 1977, fishery production grew by only 1.8 percent a year. Subsequently, 119,000 fishers in 1900 enjoyed fish catch of 4 tons each, but by 1977, the 501,000 fishers caught an average of only 1.4 tons each.
In 1995, while total fish catch continued to increase, fish catch for small fishermen declined, as big fish operators caught the bulk with their better fishing gears. But by 1996, even commercial fishers started feeling the pinch of declining catch, it added. The reasons: illegal fishing and massive fishing owing to rising demand from ever rising population, thus causing tremendous pressures on fishery resources.
Fisherfolk sinking fast in poverty. This dismal trend continued in the last administration, despite bigger funds for agriculture, and the doubling of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources’s (BFAR) budget from about P3 billion to over P6 billion a year.
In 2011 overall fishery volume production dropped by 3.6 percent to 4.97 million tons, from 5.16 million tons in 2010. This slid down further in 2012 to 4.82 million tons and stagnated in succeeding years, according to the Bureau of Agriculture Statistics (BAS).
As a result, our fisherfolk continue to sink deeper in poverty. As early as 2003, poverty incidence among fisherfolk was already at 35 percent, slightly better than farmers at 37 percent, but by 2009 fisherfolk surpassed farmers’s poverty rate of 36.7 percent by hitting 41.4 percent, the National Statistical Coordination Board says. Poverty among the urban poor is even better at only 12.8 percent, compared to fisherfolk and farmers, from whose ranks come the massive influx of rural-to-urban migrants.
Overkill response to overfishing? But what has been the government’s knee-jerk reaction to declining fish catch is “conservationism,” which was adopted hook, line and sinker by the BFAR, as it shifted toward total regulation and enforcement as manifested by the “Bantay Dagat” and “Anticyanide Fishing” programs, and got worst a few years back when it started conducting military training for fisherfolk by military and police officers, and bought arms and patrol boats to protect fishery resources.
Regulation is fine, but when you make an opposite pendulum swing by abandoning RD&E, the results are disastrous in fish production. The BFAR even pushed for the passage of the more stringent amended Fishery Code throught Republic Act 10654, which lapsed into law on February 27, 2015, even without President Benigno S. Aquino III’s signature, in accordance allegedly with Article VI, Section 27 (1) of the Constitution.
Fish operators, led by the Alliance of Philippine Fishing Federation Inc. (APFFI), decried the law as too onerous. For one, it requires all commercial vessels to install monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) gadgets costing over P240,000 each, plus monthly subscription of P20,000. Second is the designation of “fishery protocols” to board these vessels and allegedly paid by the fish operators.
Third are the numerous violations such as “fishing without permits,” “unauthorized fishing,” “fishing beyond national jurisdiction,” etc., with the onerous varying penalties equivalent to two to five times the value of catch caught, or whichever is higher, against penalties based on vessel tonnage capacity, namely, P2 million to P9 million for small-scale commercial fishers, P10 million to P15 million for medium scale, to as high as P25 million to P45 million for large-scale vessels 750 tons or heavier.
APFFI was reported as saying it has never encountered such surge in penalties from the current P10,000 per violation to five times the value of fish catch plus the confiscation of fishing gear and vessel. Moreover, upon conviction, the top 3 officials can be imprisoned for six months plus additional penalties twice the earlier fines. Indeed, the old penalties are outdated, but whether the new penalties are too much, or whether they only invite bribery to skirt penalties, the law needs to be reviewed. Meanwhile, closed seasons were declared without understanding fish behavior, like tuna, which has no nationality and swims across oceans. So, instead of fighting government, many of our deep-sea operators have registered their catch in Indonesia, Papa New Guinea and other island- nations in Micronesia.
Revive Research and Techno Transfers. Dr. Pilar F. Fontelar, PhD, the only fishery scientist probably left in the country as many of her kind have been pirated or joined research institutions abroad, argues that “no amount of regulation will increase fish catch to match demand.”
Speaking before a seminar on Wednesday organized by the Foodlink Advocacy Cooperative at the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P), Fontelar stressed that “we need not reinvent the wheel, let us instead adopt developed technologies abroad and transfer them to suit local conditions.”
Fontelar presented Israel’s technological breakthroughs in aquaculture, producing even cold-climate fish, like salmon, in fish factories in the middle of a desert. She said Israel’s system was allegedly voted unanimously in the United Nations 146 vs. zero as the technology that could feed the world. Having worked with the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources for 40 years, including 10 years of intermittent intensive fishery studies abroad, she has developed the expertise, network and access to the latest technologies. She was part of a team that introduced tilapia in the country three decades ago, developed tilapia sex reversal and crafted programs that made tilapia a top fish species in the market.
“From being a top contender in fishery research decades back, we are now lagging far behind. Local tilapia output averages only about five to eight pieces per square or cubic meter of water, but Israel can produce as many as 240 pieces or more,” Fontelar revealed.
Our ancestors learned how to fish thousands of years ago, but we must not continue teaching our children the same old fishing method—hook and line—because the modern way now is credit line to fund technologies that are products of human creativity. Through technology resulting in high productivity, we can attain real peace, so fish be with you.
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com