A provincial official of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is calling for the revival of a livelihood program to raise earnings of Taal Lake fishermen.
Batangas Provincial Environment and Natural Resource Officer Jose Elmer C. Bascos, also the concurrent Protected Area superintendent of the Taal Volcano Protected Landscape (TVPL), said he will meet with leaders of small fishermen in Taal to explore the prospects of reviving bottled tawilis sardines industry that would add value to the lake’s most popular fish product.
“Before, there is a cooperative that produces bottled sardines. But somehow, it stopped operation, I think in 2017,” Bascos told the BusinessMirror.
The idea, he said, is to maximize the benefit from catching the endangered Sardinella tawilis, the only freshwater sardine in the world endemic to Taal Lake, which he said, is nevertheless are sold at a very low price.Fishermen, Bascos said, sell tawilis, possibly cheaper than the P30-per-kilogram standard price of tawilis in a market in Talisay, Batangas.
In the next few weeks, Bascos said, he will bring up the idea to the TVPL Protected Area Management Board, which includes local government units.
“Before, we even gave the cooperatives some pressure cooker. I don’t know what happened,” he said in a mix of English and Filipino.
According to Bascos, with fishermen protesting the decision to impose a two-month tawilis fishing moratorium starting next month and the declaration of at least three fishing grounds as “no-take zone” for tawilis, it is high time to revive the livelihood program.
It was learned that some canning companies have been buying tawilis for making specialty sardines, like San Marino, which publicly announced that it will no longer produce bottled and canned tawilis in light of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) report that the population of tawilis is on the decline and is considered “endangered.”
The DENR and the Department of Agriculture – Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (DA-BFAR) are jointly managing the Taal Lake. It is both an area set aside for conservation and fishery, a fishing ground which is also used for fish cage operation.
Image credits: Arvel Malubag