Too many fishpens choking coastal ecosystems

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Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism ( Second of a series )

As it is, "human errors" have attended the proliferation of fishpens and cages. Many operators, says Arlene de la Vega, an aquaculture specialist based in Bolinao, have this notion that doubling the number of stocks means double production and higher profits without regard for the limited carrying capacity of the water.

Milkfish growers, De la Vega observes, also tend to be "price-conscious instead of quality-conscious" in their practice. Feeds commonly used were found to be of inferior quality and contain a high percentage of fines, or poorly processed particles that end up as wasted feeds.

Rey Padilla, a fish cage worker, sadly typifies the lack of training that ought to have gone into such ventures. He seems to think that feeding the fish is a mere matter of common sense. "We just feed them, plain and simple," he says. "With the small ones, you give fry mash, the bigger ones crumble, then starter, up to the grower."

What fish cage workers like Padilla do not know is that feeds that do not get eaten by the milkfish, and the fishes’ own waste – fecal material, urine – add to the nutrient load into the water body and only contribute to a condition called eutrophication. A lot of nitrate and phosphate is produced when these materials are broken down.

While these nutrients provide more food for phytoplanktons (microscopic plants in the water) for the consumption of zooplanktons (microorganisms that are in turn eaten by the fish), their proliferation increases the use of dissolved oxygen in the water column. The fish that are enclosed in pens and cages have to contend with a depleting oxygen concentration. At some critical stage, there is simply not enough oxygen for all of the fish and they die. As Jacinto points out, the fish kills that have occurred since February in Pangasinan, were manifestations of systems gone eutrophic.

The other worrisome aspect of eutrophic water conditions is that it could also lead to a bloom of harmful algae. This was the case with this town’s February fish kill, which was accompanied by a proliferation of harmful algae.

Identified as Prorocentrum minimum, its occurrence at such a massive scale is unprecedented in the country and, the UPMSI says, is not likely to be the only potentially harmful species now present in Bolinao’s coastal waters.

Such a perturbed system may be compared to Manila Bay’s, where a new, dominant plankton has multiplied so much as to give its waters a greenish to brownish color. In the past, there used to be only the harmful algel bloom associated with red tide incidents. In the case of Laguna de Bay, the presence of the predominant blue-green algae whose periodic blooms occur between July and September have also been associated with fish kill incidents in the lake.

Examples of the harm too many fish pens and cages bring to its host environment are documented by a recent study conducted by UPMSI and the Marine Environment Resource Foundation (MERF) as part of the resource and social assessment of Lingayen Gulf undertaken by BFAR’s Fisheries Resource Management Project (FRMP). The study confirms the worsening water quality conditions in the Lingayen Gulf as a result of increased aquaculture activities in the last six years.

The change in water quality is exemplified by the case of Bolinao where the threefold-increase in fish pen and fish cage structures has resulted in a corresponding increase in nutrient levels of ammonia, which is mostly released from the nitrogen in feeds, as well as those of nitrite, nitrate and phosphate. The high nutrient levels explain the higher phytoplankton and zooplankton biomass especially in enclosed areas as the Caquiputan Channel. The study also reveals that the recovery rate of the coral reefs in the Lingayen Gulf have been reduced by the presence of algal growth. Coral cover in the Gulf was found to have declined to only 30 percent over two decades, with the majority of live hard coral cover estimates being poor and fair.

Danger signs in Visayas fishpens

Meanwhile, there have been reports of algal bloom and sediment accumulation in Siyt Bay in Negros Oriental where fish cage operations given to bangus culture began in 1997. Water quality tests conducted by the Silliman University Marine Laboratory showed high presence of nitrates and phosphates in Siyt Bay.

The Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Council (SEAFDEC) has also raised concerns over the potential contamination of the water because of aquaculture activities in Northern Iloilo, where fish pen and fish cage operations have also invaded the coastal waters of Tinagong Dagat, known to the locals as Plandico Bay.

"And we have not even factored in the issue of diseases yet," remarks Jacinto. "In areas where you have intensive culture, it is known, I think our experience with the prawn industry bears witness to this. You have in turn the prevalence of diseases, some of which are difficult to naturally counter."

In fact, last November, prawn farms in Tinagong Dagat Bay in Capiz, the country’s acknowledged seafood capital, suffered deaths of cultured prawn, shrimp, crab and other crustaceans due to a mysterious disease. A SEAFDEC team that went to check on the situation there traced the prawn kill to chemical causes but could not determine the origins of these.

"But anyway, the primary reason we went actually to Capiz is to undertake field sampling of its estuaries because, of all the provinces in Panay, the situation there points to a runaway development of pens and cages," says Dr. Jurgenne Primavera of the SEAFDEC Aquaculture Department based in Iloilo.

In truth, fish pens now lined up both sides of the Panay and Palina Rivers, and worse, serve as extensions of fishponds along the riverbanks long expropriated by private locators. These have displaced the lift nets and other artisanal fishing gears of municipal fishers and blocked their navigational routes.

It may take a massive fish kill to wake the people of these communities to realize what their waters are being subjected to. Lino Fernandez, whose pens suffered from the recent fish kills in Dagupan, for instance grumbles that he is now waiting for a longer period of time to harvest smaller-sized bangus. But he also acknowledges that pen owners like him contributed to the sorry situation.

"That was one of the causes, the rampant setting up of pens, it was just too much, with some even in the middle of the waters," says Fernandez. "That should be regulated so everything will be in order. When areas are regulated, maybe fish kills could be avoided."

Still, there are indications that some communities will not need dead fish as a wake-up call. News reports of what fish pens and cages have wrought here and elsewhere have apparently reached the subsistence fishers of Badian Bay in Cebu, who have expressed fears that the 40 fish cages set up recently in their traditional fishing grounds would only bring similar problems. Fishers of Calatagan in Batangas, where mangroves continue to be cut to give way to renewed interest in fishpond operations, echo their worries.

SEAFDEC’s Primavera puts it this way: "Since water is the medium, it is shared whether you are in a pen or in a pond or in a cage, or out in the open waters. It’s the same water. It’s different with an aquatic medium."

Small fishers left out

In 1998, Congress passed the Fisheries Code or Republic Act 8850, which said that permits to operate fish pens and cages were to be given only to municipal fishers and their organizations.

The problem was that most small-time fishers had neither the considerable money nor the technical know-how needed to set up aquaculture projects. They also lacked the political connections that facilitate the granting of licenses and permits to operate such potentially lucrative activities.

Thus, in many places in the country, profitable aquaculture enterprises have ended up in the hands of wealthy, politically well-connected entrepreneurs. This has meant the further marginalization of small fishers and the increasing concentration of the control over aquatic resources. Small fishers saw their traditional spawning and fishing grounds shrink ever smaller as more fish pens and cages were put up, thereby decreasing their already meager incomes.

"We just couldn’t afford it (getting a cage)," says Bolinao, Pangasinan fisher William Caampued. "We are poor, we don’t have the capital. Yes, that’s open to fishers – but if they can find someone who would loan them the money."

In this coastal town, operating a single fish cage would mean more than P800,000. As it turned out, some of Bolinao’s local officials, including the mayor and the vice-mayor, were later found to be owners or operators of fish pens and cages, at times even going beyond the five-unit limit per owner stipulated in the municipality’s own fisheries ordinance.

But the big-time fish pen owners’ greed seems to be leading to their own undoing. These days, more and more coastal towns are being alerted to the environmental dangers of having a high concentration of fish pens and cages in one area and agitating for a decrease in the number of these structures. Caampued, for instance, helped dismantle a fish cage squatting offshore just two months ago. Whether marginal fishers like him will finally have a chance at having more than a hand-to-mouth existence as a result, however, is unclear.

For all the flak fish pens and cages have been getting lately, the government is still determined to pursue efforts to intensify aquaculture in the coming years, as part of a drive to increase fish production.

Its thrust is anchored on a comprehensive aquaculture for rural development program. This includes a P200 million investment in a sprawling mariculture park in Samal Island in Davao del Norte that was set up in August last year. (Aquaculture is the more general term used for fish culture in fresh, brackish and marine areas, whether in ponds, pens and cages. Mariculture is aquaculture practiced in coastal and marine waters.)

The 200-hectare mariculture park is patterned after the concept of an industrial park in which the government provides the infrastructure such as roads, power, water, communications, waste disposal and sewage facilities to attract investors. As the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) describes it, the mariculture park is "an industrial estate put in the sea for the fishing industry."

Peck Orbita, operations chief of the Samal project, insists that the park intends to help marginalized fisherfolk, in particular those who were displaced by it. But since these fishers lack the capital to invest on fish cages (a 10 m x 10 m cage would cost them P141,000; a 20 m x 20 m cage, P235,000), Orbita encourages them to form cooperatives, after which they will be assisted in formulating their feasibility studies and financing plans to be endorsed to Quedan and Rural Credit Guarantee Corp. (Quedancor), which provides credit financing in the agriculture, fishery and informal sectors.

Fishers, he adds, may also opt to rent an area in the park to the tune of P19,000 a year for one hectare or P360 a year per fish cage.

But one wonders if the mariculture park in Samal would really benefit marginalized fishers. The way things are there right now, it does not seem any less different from the private investor-dominated affair in the unregulated environment of fish pens and cages. (To be continued)