The Filipino chief of a regional ?sheries center is batting for more community-based hatcheries to ensure food security in the country and Southeast Asia.
Dr. Joebert D. Toledo, chief of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center-Aquaculture Department (SEAFDEC-AQD) in Tigbauan, Iloilo, said conservation requires a collective effort to shore up the country’s ?sh stocks and village hatcheries are good for smallholder ?shermen.
With the annual per capita ?sh consumption rising from the 27 kilos several years ago, Toledo believes Agriculture Secretary Proceso J. Alcala is on the right track since he is promoting the development of more ?sh hatcheries nationwide.
Moreover, documents from the Department of Agriculture (DA) showed that government is concerned about the biomass of currently ?shed demersal stocks that have declined to about 30 percent of its original level in the 1940s and small pelagiocs are also biologically and economically over?shed.
These documents, which became the basis of a draft fisheries administrative order that would authorize the importation of ?sh for the wet markets, said ?shing in the mid-1980s was already more than thrice the level necessary to harvest the maximum sustainable yield.
Under these conditions, freshwater and marine aquaculture assumes a signi?cant role in increasing yield from fish pens and cages and establishing hatcheries all over the country, particularly in traditional ?shing areas.
Moreover, DA statistics projected the Philippine population 101,833, 938 as of July 2011 and the per capita ?sh consumption at 27 kilos annually, assuming the 1997 ?gure is still correct.
The country actually imports anchovies (dilis), round scad (galunggong), and sardines (tamban) since these major food ?sh species have become scarcer.
Toledo said the country can respond to the issue of declining supply by strengthening aquaculture and promoting conservation measures, including the prohibitions on catching sardines and other species during the spawning season.
Rather than rely on fry and ?ngerlings from the wild, the DA has to depend more on ?sh farming, and the initiative to establish more community-based hatcheries falls squarely on the need to conserve, propagate, and maintain spawners in inland ponds and release them in the wild when conditions require.
Toledo said there is really no danger in producing more and more fry and ?ngerlings since they could supply ?sh cages and ?sh pens with stocks and the balance should be released in the wild to ensure that ?sh populations would increase.
He added that the Philippine government has been supporting SEAFDEC-AQD for many years, with the ?nancial subsidy reaching P175 million last year, an amount that has contributed tremendously in ensuring that the agency could function well and fulfill its mandate.
2012 Tempo