Pangasinan town wants to be known as Seafood Capital of the North

BINMALEY, Pangasinan, Philippines  – This first class coastal town, known as the Fish Bowl of Pangasinan, is aiming to become the Seafood Capital of the North.

Located along the central coastland of Pangasinan facing the South China Sea, in between Lingayen and Dagupan City, this town is blessed with 2,759 hectares of fishponds devoted to bangus (milkfish), Butch Ferrer, municipal agriculturist, said.

This makes it as number one in Pangasinan and in Region 1 in terms of aquaculture area with about 7,523.5 metric tons of bangus per year raised, Ferrer said. The town is famous for its bangus (milkfish) aquaculture because of the existence of numerous fishponds known in Pangasinan dialect as pokok.

At least 2,283 operators are involved in it, he added.

The produce translates to about P752.350 million worth of bangus yearly raised here.

Aside from bangus, the town also raises high value marine products like malaga (siganid), prawns and tilapia, Ferrer continued.

There are 220 hectares of fishponds for malaga with yearly production of 113 metric tons while another 791 hectares are for prawns with 565 metric tons produced yearly, he added.

Binmaley’s bangus production dwarfs Dagupan City’s produce of 12 tons of milkfish daily only. There are 978 hectares of fishponds in Dagupan City but 70 to 80 percent of the ponds now serve only as “transition ponds” where bangus fingerlings are grown up to a certain size and then transferred to the fishpens.

The city’s fishpen production of about 3,000 tons however compensates for the gap. Dagupan City is aggressive in the promotion of its bangus product as it has successfully achieved its tag as Bangus Capital.

But Binmaley Mayor Lorenzo Cerezo is optimistic the town will achieve its goal as the biggest producer of marine products in the North.

The mayor said a series of seminars has been scheduled for the fish farmers to further boost their production capability. He added that he is in talks with a private group to put up a cold storage at the public market.