Alvarez says Lingayen Gulf showcase of ecological mess
By Yolanda Fuertes
Inquirer News Service - Philippines
February 25, 2002
BINALONAN, Pangasinan - Philippines – Environment Secretary Heherson Alvarez described the Lingayen Gulf as a “showcase of our failure” to protect the country’s coastal resources because of the ecological troubles that continue to plague it.
Alvarez, who accompanied President Macapagal-Arroyo on her visit here Saturday, cited the incessant use of “desperate methods” like blast fishing and poison to catch fish that has depleted by 50 percent the fish supply of the gulf in the last 30 years.
“There were only 100 fishermen in the Lingayen Gulf then, but now that number has multiplied 10 times. Since the grandchildren of the fishermen cannot find employment on land, they become fishermen and fight for the gulf’s limited resources,” Alvarez said.
The Lingayen Gulf, located in the northwestern coast of Luzon, is a U-shaped bay that directly opens to the South China Sea. It is bound to the west by Cape Bolinao and to the northeast by Poro Point in La Union.
Records of the Lingayen Gulf Coastal Area Management Commission showed that there are more than 1,200 municipal fishermen dependent on the gulf for their daily subsistence and about 100 commercial fishing boats (CFBs) that ply in the gulf daily.
Alvarez said Fishery Administrative Order 17 restricts commercial fishing 15 kilometers from the shoreline because the operations “scrape the sea’s bottom, in the process ruining the habitat and the chances for rehabilitation of the fishing grounds.”
But there are 64 CFBs licensed to fish in the gulf, and other CFBs that have permits to fish in the Ilocos and other provinces also fish in the Lingayen Gulf at the pretext of berthing there.
Only 159 square kilometers of the gulf are reserved for commercial fishing that can accommodate 10 CFBs.
The municipal fishermen accused the commercial fishers of encroaching into the municipal waters and blamed them for destroying the gulf’s resources by using fine-mesh nets that catch even small fish.
On the other hand, the commercial fishers blame municipal fishers for using dynamite and cyanide to catch fish, which destroy corals and sea grasses.
Mangrove forests in the gulf are also under threat because these are cut and the area converted into fishponds and other uses.
The latest addition to the ecological headaches of the Lingayen Gulf is aquaculture, which brings economic bonanza to operators but is a bane to ecology.
What is worse is that the owners of the aquaculture structures, which dot the gulf and rivers that empty into it, are the decision-makers themselves, Alvarez said.
“So they are thinking of short-term benefits. The economic beneficiaries (of aquaculture) must not be the decision-makers,” he said.
In Bolinao town, for example, local officials are among the owners of fish pens and cages hit by a massive fish kill on Feb. 1 and 3.
Alvarez said there was a need to study if an environmental compliance certificate must be required for aquaculture operations, which were found out to be “environmentally destructive.”
“We have to study that (but) it would mean a revision of the Local Government Code. We may be encroaching on the authority of the local governments,” he said.
By Yolanda Fuertes
Inquirer News Service - Philippines
February 25, 2002
BINALONAN, Pangasinan - Philippines – Environment Secretary Heherson Alvarez described the Lingayen Gulf as a “showcase of our failure” to protect the country’s coastal resources because of the ecological troubles that continue to plague it.
Alvarez, who accompanied President Macapagal-Arroyo on her visit here Saturday, cited the incessant use of “desperate methods” like blast fishing and poison to catch fish that has depleted by 50 percent the fish supply of the gulf in the last 30 years.
“There were only 100 fishermen in the Lingayen Gulf then, but now that number has multiplied 10 times. Since the grandchildren of the fishermen cannot find employment on land, they become fishermen and fight for the gulf’s limited resources,” Alvarez said.
The Lingayen Gulf, located in the northwestern coast of Luzon, is a U-shaped bay that directly opens to the South China Sea. It is bound to the west by Cape Bolinao and to the northeast by Poro Point in La Union.
Records of the Lingayen Gulf Coastal Area Management Commission showed that there are more than 1,200 municipal fishermen dependent on the gulf for their daily subsistence and about 100 commercial fishing boats (CFBs) that ply in the gulf daily.
Alvarez said Fishery Administrative Order 17 restricts commercial fishing 15 kilometers from the shoreline because the operations “scrape the sea’s bottom, in the process ruining the habitat and the chances for rehabilitation of the fishing grounds.”
But there are 64 CFBs licensed to fish in the gulf, and other CFBs that have permits to fish in the Ilocos and other provinces also fish in the Lingayen Gulf at the pretext of berthing there.
Only 159 square kilometers of the gulf are reserved for commercial fishing that can accommodate 10 CFBs.
The municipal fishermen accused the commercial fishers of encroaching into the municipal waters and blamed them for destroying the gulf’s resources by using fine-mesh nets that catch even small fish.
On the other hand, the commercial fishers blame municipal fishers for using dynamite and cyanide to catch fish, which destroy corals and sea grasses.
Mangrove forests in the gulf are also under threat because these are cut and the area converted into fishponds and other uses.
The latest addition to the ecological headaches of the Lingayen Gulf is aquaculture, which brings economic bonanza to operators but is a bane to ecology.
What is worse is that the owners of the aquaculture structures, which dot the gulf and rivers that empty into it, are the decision-makers themselves, Alvarez said.
“So they are thinking of short-term benefits. The economic beneficiaries (of aquaculture) must not be the decision-makers,” he said.
In Bolinao town, for example, local officials are among the owners of fish pens and cages hit by a massive fish kill on Feb. 1 and 3.
Alvarez said there was a need to study if an environmental compliance certificate must be required for aquaculture operations, which were found out to be “environmentally destructive.”
“We have to study that (but) it would mean a revision of the Local Government Code. We may be encroaching on the authority of the local governments,” he said.
