The backbone of Philippine aquaculture

Text and Photos by Henrylito D. Tacio
Considered as its national fish, bangus or milkfish (known in the science world as “Chanos chanos”) is the largest foodfish species farmed in the Philippines.  It is a P50-billion industry, contributing 17% to total aquaculture production in 2014 and constituting 15% of the total fish consumption by Filipinos.
It’s no wonder why fishery experts consider bangus farming as “the backbone of Philippine aquaculture.”  Although commercial production of bangus dates back more than a century ago, it was only in recent years that significant growth of the industry was realized.
“From 1950 to 1983, milkfish production was steadily rising with an average growth rate of 8.1%,” said an Impact Assessment (IA) bulletin issued by the Laguna-based Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCAARRD).
Today, the Philippines is one of the top bangus producers in the world, along with Indonesia and Taiwan.  “Until recently, the country has contributed around 55 percent share of the world bangus production,” said Dr. Rafael D. Guerrero III, an academician with the National Academy of Science and Technology and a well-known fishery scientist.
The Philippines has been exporting bangus to other countries like the United States, England, Canada, and Japan.  “The main consumer market, however, is the United States, where there are large Filipino communities,” Dr. Guerrero said.
Sleek and silvery, beloved because of its mild, sweet flesh, and its melt-in the-mouth belly fat, bangus is a favorite Filipino fish.  In Metro Manila, the national fish is rated first-class. Its popularity of bangus can be gleaned in such recipes as bangus “en tocho” (fried bangus served with a sauce of any of the following: “tahure,” “tokwa,” or “tausi”), “bulanglang na bangus” (with eggplants, ampalaya, sitao, malunggay, onion, tomatoes, rice washing and bagoong), “rellenong bangus” (formerly a party dish; now available even in school cafeterias), and bangus “lumpia.”
Bangus is closely related to carps and catfishes.  It occurs in the Indian Ocean and across the Pacific Ocean, tending to school around coasts and islands with reefs.  A warm water species, it prefers water temperatures between 20-33 degrees Centigrade.
In the Philippines, bangus can be raised anywhere.  However, the top bangus producing provinces are Bulacan, Pangasinan, Capiz, Iloilo, and Negros Occidental.  The most recent report released by the Bureau of Agricultural Statistics (BAS) show that the combined production of these five provinces alone accounts for more than 50% of the country’s total production.
Raising bangus can be done employing different production systems in freshwater and in brackishwater.  “Depending on the available resources and level of management, the culture methods can vary from the traditional or extensive system, the modular or semi-intensive to the intensive system,” according to “Milkfish: A Basic Domestic Need Commodity.”
The semi-intensive system is an improvement of the traditional system where fingerlings are stocked at a higher density.  With natural and artificial feeds, bangus fingerlings are stocked at densities of 6,000 to 12,000 per hectare.  With dependence on natural food in the traditional system, low stocking densities of 1,000 to 3,000 fingerlings per hectare are applied.  In this method, the culture period is longer thus allowing only one or two croppings a year.  The modular pond system, on the other hand, allows a continuous operation and makes possible four to six croppings per year.
To make fishponds and fish cages productive throughout the year, adequate supply of bangus fingerlings is necessary. “Historically, milkfish fry abound in the country, especially during the fry season in the months of April to October,” the milkfish primer notes.  “During recent years, the number collected has been dwindling.”
“Not all is rosy in the milkfish industry,” the IA bulletin said. “Production from 1984 to 1996 started to decline with an average growth rate of -3.7%.  This was primarily due to the significant decrease in the supply of wild-caught fry, which traditionally served as source of seedstock for grow-out operators.” 
Among the reasons cited for the decline of wildfish milkfish fry were: degradation of traditional fry grounds due to overfishing, decrease in the number of wild “sabalo” or broodstock, and pollution of coastal waters due to industrialization.
“With the decrease in seed supply, the cost of fry and fingerlings has increased significantly over the years,” the milkfish primer said.  To save the bangus industry from downfall, some have imported fingerlings from Taiwan and Indonesia; although others thought this option was not practical as the fry were very expensive.
In the past, the Philippines was the world’s largest producer of bangus since the 1950s.  In the 1980s, however, Indonesia caught up with the country’s production.  Today, the Philippines only ranks second to Indonesia in terms of bangus production.
To solve the problem, the milkfish hatchery came into existence.  “The milkfish hatchery technology was jointly developed in the 1970s by aquaculture scientists from the Philippine, Taiwan and Indonesia under the leadership of aquaculture department of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center,” the IA bulletin said.
However, commercialization of hatchery-bred fry started only in the 1990s under the initiative of Taiwan, followed by Indonesia and finally the Philippines.
One of those private companies engaged in the production of bangus fry is the Finfish Hatcheries, Inc. (FHI).  “We have been in the bangus fry production business since 1997,” says Rene B. Bocaya, FHI’s national marketing manager.
FHI, the first and largest commercial fry hatchery in the country, is part of the business integration program of the Agribusiness Unit of the Alcantara Group. It now supplies more than 50% of the national requirements for bangus fry.
As a result of steady supply of bangus in the market, there are now processing plants for bangus value-added products.  The foreign exchange earnings from bangus exports has been reported to be about US$15 million.
In Sarangani Province, where the FHI’s hatchery is located, bangus production has increased considerably.  Actually, the hatchery is in Lun Masla, Malapatan.  Here, about 13,000 breeders are maintained and managed to produce bangus eggs on a daily basis throughout the year. The eggs are collected, cleaned and hatched. The hatchlings are grown to the marketable sizes in 18-21 days in larval ponds. During the growing period, they are fed with a mixture of planktons and commercial feeds.
The breeders are 50% males and 50% females.  “It is tedious to sex the fish individually and tag them,” Bocaya explains.  “We have some breeders that are more than 25 years old and are still breeding in groups well.”
It takes 5 years for a bangus to mature sexually.  FHI selects breeders for commercial production only when they are 8 years old. The female mature breeder, called sabalo, can produce seven kilos of eggs in one year. And one kilo consists of 750,000 eggs.
Bangus spawns in ponds in frenzy at night.  The sabalo release the eggs while the males discharge the milt. Fertilization happens externally in the pond water. There is no need for hormone induction for mature breeders. The eggs are collected in nets in the early morning. They are cleaned and placed in the larval ponds immediately.
“The bangus eggs hatch in the ponds within 24 hours,” Bocaya informs.  “The hatchlings feed on the yolk sac for about 2-3 days. They undergo morphological transformations. As first feeds, the larva are supplied natural food in a mixture of zoo- and phyto-planktons. Commercial feeds are provided in the last quarter of the production.”
Bangus is grown in a number of stages and in varying degrees of culture intensity depending on the grower’s production design and the nature of the growing environment.  The simplest bangus value chain is the three-stage system of a nursery stage, a transition stage and a grow-out stage.
In the nursery, bangus is grown from fry (“kawag-kawag”) to fingerling (“hatirin”). In the transition stage, the fingerlings are grown to juvenile (“garungan”). In the grow-out stage the juveniles are grown to marketable sizes. 
In the grow-out stage, bangus is produced in a number of categories depending on the pond structure the capitalization and the grower’s production design. Traditional extensive ponds using lablab as feeds normally seed 2,000 juveniles of 50 grams in size. “Lablab” production is takes 6 weeks. A well-prepared lablab pond can produce 500 kilograms of fish biomass. With 2,000 juveniles stocked, the grower is able to produce 300-gram fish in three to four months from seeding.
In intensive ponds with aeration, growers can produce 8,000-10,000 kilograms of bangus fish in a hectare. Stocking density to grow 500-gram fish is about 20,000 juveniles per hectare.  In fish pens in Laguna Lake, juveniles of 30 to 50 grams are stocked at 50,000 per hectare.  There is no feeding needed as the lake provides the algae that the bangus feed on.
In marine sea cages, juveniles of 30 to 50 grams are stocked at a rate of 20-50 per square meter depending on the site and the business plan of the grower. Harvest can reach up to 30-40 kilograms per cubic meter of 500-gram bangus in six to eight months.
According to Bocaya, at least 50% of the costs in intensive pond systems goes to feeds.  The other costs that figure are electricity, water, labor and pond maintenance costs.   In marine cage systems, feeds are 80% of the costs.  In extensive systems, lablab production is still 40% of the costs.
“On the average, gross profits are at about 25-30% of selling price on a good year across all production systems,” Bocaya points out.
No wonder, sales of hatchery-bred fingerlings are increasing. When they were new, the fish operators and growers were skeptical about using the hatchery-bred fingerlings. They thought that those caught from the wild were hardier.
However, the perceptions of bangus farmers have changed, Bocaya says. They now prefer the hatchery-bred fingerlings because they are more uniform and they also grow faster. Those from the wild usually have a survival rate of 50-60% while those from the hatchery usually have 82-85% survival rate.