If everything goes right, we may soon have a new department – the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture.
Thanks to Senator Ralph Recto – yes, the husband of award-winning actress Vilma Santos – who is seeking to have such kind of department “to address high prices of fish in markets,” wrote Vanne Elaine Terrazala in a news report which appeared in Manila Bulletin.
“Recto, in planning to file a measure on the matter, said the proposed agency would aid in tempering of inflation which government economic managers now blamed on food,” Terrazala wrote.
Currently, the agency the focuses on the status of the country’s fishery sector is the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR). Under the Department of Agriculture, it is responsible for the development, improvement, management and conservation of the country’s fisheries and aquatic resources.
In the past, there was a research agency that seek to help scientists in conducting their studies. It was headed by Dr. Rafael D. Guerrero III – touted to be the Father of Tilapia in the country. The name of the agency: Philippine Council for Aquatic and Marine Research and Development.
During the time of President Fidel V. Ramos, he signed into law Republic Act No. 8550, entitled, “An Act Providing for the Development, Management and Conservation of the Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, Integrating all laws pertinent thereto and for other purposes,” otherwise known as the Philippine Fisheries Code of 1998. This law took effect on March 23, 1998.
I think it is high time to have the fisheries its own department. It must be recalled that in 2012, Senator Loren Legarda also sponsored a bill that would create a fishery department. In her sponsorship speech, she said thePhilippines has one of the world’s richest ecosystems, characterized by extensive coral reefs, sea-grass beds and dense mangroves.
In 2008, the Philippines ranked sixth in global fish and aquaculture production. Twenty-three years earlier, in 1985, the country was listed number four. Next to China, the Philippines was the second largest seaweed producer in the world.
In 2013, the Philippines ranked seventh worldwide in terms of fish production, according to BFAR. In 2014, the country produced 4.69 million metric tons of fish valued at P237.71 billion. Curiously enough, 50% of that production (2.34 million metric tons) came from aquaculture. Municipal fishing produced 26% (1.24 million metric tons) while the remaining 24% (1.1 million metric tons) came from commercial fishing.
“These figures suggest we are rich in fisheries and coastal resources as a nation, and yet, hunger affected 4.5 million families in the last quarter of 2011,” Legarda pointed out. “This alarming irony becomes even more glaring in the fact that while we are rich in fisheries and coastal resources, among the poorest in our country are coastal communities with 4 of 10 coastal residents living under poverty line.”
So, amidst plenty, where is there hunger among Filipinos living in coastal areas?
“The past three decades have seen the rapid decline of the Philippine coastal ecosystem,” Legarda pointed out. Some 70% and 20% of mangroves and seagrasses are destroyed, respectively. Nearly 90% of coral reefs are under threat. The biomass of coastal fish stocks is only 10%-30% of its state in 1940s.
One of the best ways to help the fishery sectors is to convert BFAR to a department, which President Rodrigo R. Duterte and his team mate, Alan Cayetano promised during the campaign period.
“(The creation of new department) will also make us internationally competitive, because presently when we have meetings, other countries, their fisheries and aquatic resources sector already have Departments or Ministry, we are left behind because we remain as only a Bureau,” Fatma Idris, director of the BFAR in Davao was quoted as saying.
But before that happens, the Congress must first pass a law authorizing the creation of a Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture. It’s good to know that the proposals have already been submitted to the House of Representatives.
In the Senate, Legarda filed S.B. No. 242, entitled “An Act Creating the Department of Fisheries, Providing for its Powers and Functions, and for other Purposes.”
“Fish is the main source of protein for the Filipino,” Legarda said in her explanatory note of her bill. “An island nation, the Philippines necessarily depends, to a large extent, on its fishery resources for its food.
“Fish, which used to be among the cheapest sources of protein, is now more expensive than pork or chicken,” she continued. “The States is now called upon to perform its task to ensure sufficient food supply to millions of Filipinos through the development of the vast potentials of Philippine fisheries.”
According to Legarda, the Philippines is composed of more than 7,000 islands “outlined by more than 18,000 kilometers of coastline, bordering roughly 70% of the country’s municipalities.”
The Philippines has “about 132 principal rivers throughout the archipelago which drain through the coastal zone measuring 27 million hectares.” Also, the “coastline is indented with several bays and gulfs that can serve as natural harbors.”
Unknowingly, the country’s territorial waters is 220-million hectares which can be utilized as fishing ground: about 193.4 million hectares are oceanic waters and 26.6 million hectares belong the what is called Exclusive Economic Zone.
“Increasing national productivity is an urgent matter if we are to industrialize by the turn of the century,” Legarda said. “But development should not be at the expense of rapidly depleting our fishery and aquatic resources.”
For his part, Senator Recto said he will file another bill – after those five bills on the proposed department are still pending in the committee level. “It makes sense to have a Secretary of Agriculture to oversee 10-million hectares of agriculture land and a Secretary of Fisheries to oversee 250-million hectares of fisheries (in the) EEZ.”
