A Profile:
I come from the other side of the world. Where the whole things starts. The ocean where the fish comes from and the hands that catches them. Where the fish are packed into oxygenated plastic bags and put into styro boxes to be loaded into the planes that flies to the Western world.
I use to be an exporter doing business with my family. Steve Robinson indoctrinated me into net-caught and the fever took hold of me up to the present. It is like drugs to me. I took up the challenge of net use and training after Steve left. I love to dive and observe ornamental fish in their habitats. I used to do a lot of private net training even in high-risk sites and left at least a mark of small changes in all those sites.
I love the field work so much that when IMA offered me to do more field trainings with better funds without second thoughts I close my business after talking to my family to avoid conflict of interest and buried myself in field work for more than a decade with IMA. I have been working in this industry for more than two decades earning my spurs. I have my share of failures and frustration and small successes. I have a love, hate relationship with IMA but I owe them debt of gratitude for expanding my horizons and always backing me up. I am known to be very outspoken when it comes to this industry that I care for, but ever since I have seldom put my foot in my mouth and if I do I am quick to admit my mistakes and correct it. I do not do shows (moro-moro) for visiting funding persons or guests to show that everything is working when it is not. I know a lot of collectors, middlemen, and exporters, some good some bad. I have gone out with bad and good collectors when they go collecting for weeks and months giving me a chance to interact with them at night time in the small boats we slept in that even their toilet habits is known to me. I share their cramped space in the boats, eat the bland food that they ate, listened to their hopes and dreams and cynical ness. I have stayed in villages that were almost considered as "no man's lands." In short I have interacted for several years with collectors and exporters in the Philippines and Indonesia.
I joined MAC 3 years ago because I thought it was the handle I was looking for, an instrument to separate the good and the bad collectors and exporters so the industry can benefit from it. I left MAC because they have to many armchair generals that ran the show without listening to the people in the field. Their armchair generals always caught us by surprise in the field and can never admit mistakes. Transparency was never part of the whole thing even when I was part of them.
I am still doing net training (in fact I am doing Southern Tagalog now) on my own with a new twist. I train collectors and do workshops for the technical staff of exporters who want to convert into 100% net caught. I have help from Steve who advises me what goes wrong in shipments that arrives in the Western world so I can react fast to make whatever correction is needed. Trainees themselves are helping me out by buying the gears that they can afford to buy and some net collectors who are doing well now are donating some of the needed gears and visiting these sites to help me out, a new movement that I never expected to happen. I am going to arrange some training in Indonesia by June too. So life is exciting and a challenge.
As I said I love this industry and know it can be a real partner to conservation, sustainability, and economic well being of collectors and other people in the coastal areas that use the same sites as the collectors. The whole things can benefit the industry as a whole. I cannot also claim to be a "know it all" but I know that a combine-united effort will do the job.
Ferdinand
I come from the other side of the world. Where the whole things starts. The ocean where the fish comes from and the hands that catches them. Where the fish are packed into oxygenated plastic bags and put into styro boxes to be loaded into the planes that flies to the Western world.
I use to be an exporter doing business with my family. Steve Robinson indoctrinated me into net-caught and the fever took hold of me up to the present. It is like drugs to me. I took up the challenge of net use and training after Steve left. I love to dive and observe ornamental fish in their habitats. I used to do a lot of private net training even in high-risk sites and left at least a mark of small changes in all those sites.
I love the field work so much that when IMA offered me to do more field trainings with better funds without second thoughts I close my business after talking to my family to avoid conflict of interest and buried myself in field work for more than a decade with IMA. I have been working in this industry for more than two decades earning my spurs. I have my share of failures and frustration and small successes. I have a love, hate relationship with IMA but I owe them debt of gratitude for expanding my horizons and always backing me up. I am known to be very outspoken when it comes to this industry that I care for, but ever since I have seldom put my foot in my mouth and if I do I am quick to admit my mistakes and correct it. I do not do shows (moro-moro) for visiting funding persons or guests to show that everything is working when it is not. I know a lot of collectors, middlemen, and exporters, some good some bad. I have gone out with bad and good collectors when they go collecting for weeks and months giving me a chance to interact with them at night time in the small boats we slept in that even their toilet habits is known to me. I share their cramped space in the boats, eat the bland food that they ate, listened to their hopes and dreams and cynical ness. I have stayed in villages that were almost considered as "no man's lands." In short I have interacted for several years with collectors and exporters in the Philippines and Indonesia.
I joined MAC 3 years ago because I thought it was the handle I was looking for, an instrument to separate the good and the bad collectors and exporters so the industry can benefit from it. I left MAC because they have to many armchair generals that ran the show without listening to the people in the field. Their armchair generals always caught us by surprise in the field and can never admit mistakes. Transparency was never part of the whole thing even when I was part of them.
I am still doing net training (in fact I am doing Southern Tagalog now) on my own with a new twist. I train collectors and do workshops for the technical staff of exporters who want to convert into 100% net caught. I have help from Steve who advises me what goes wrong in shipments that arrives in the Western world so I can react fast to make whatever correction is needed. Trainees themselves are helping me out by buying the gears that they can afford to buy and some net collectors who are doing well now are donating some of the needed gears and visiting these sites to help me out, a new movement that I never expected to happen. I am going to arrange some training in Indonesia by June too. So life is exciting and a challenge.
As I said I love this industry and know it can be a real partner to conservation, sustainability, and economic well being of collectors and other people in the coastal areas that use the same sites as the collectors. The whole things can benefit the industry as a whole. I cannot also claim to be a "know it all" but I know that a combine-united effort will do the job.
Ferdinand
