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By Marlon Alexander S. Luistro, Philippine
Center for Investigative Journalism
Editor’s note: Part one reported how
Taal Lake, a protected area, is dying from the proliferation of
illegal fish cages and a lack of funding to enforce laws that
protect it.
Second of three parts
TALISAY and SAN NICOLAS, Batangas: More than a
decade ago, Talisay resident Vicente Llona’s take-home pay after a
day’s hard work at a construction site came to P110.
Today, the 43-year-old high-school graduate
earns five times as much. Since 2002, he has been growing tilapia in
fish cages in Taal Lake, an occupation that now nets him as much as
P100,000 every six months—and he doesn’t even have to break much
sweat.
“Our job is simple,” said Napoleon Carandang,
a fish-cage caretaker like Llona. “We just feed the fish thrice a
day, and wait for at least five months before we can harvest
them.”
Livelihood generation and food production were
the primary reasons why the national government decided almost 30
years ago to promote aquaculture and encourage fish farming in the
country’s lakes. Today fish-cage operations in Taal Lake alone
directly employ more than 1,500 people, while the lake’s tilapia
production has helped feed not only residents of the Calabarzon (Cavite-Laguna-Batangas-Rizal-Quezon)
Region, but also those in Metro Manila.
But scientists said unregulated fish-cage
operations have put many of the country’s bodies of water at risk.
Indeed, not even Taal Lake’s “protected” status has spared it
of the environmental woes attributed to practices particular to
untrained fish farmers.
Overstocking and overfeeding
These practices include overstocking the fish
cages and overfeeding the fish that lead to excess amount of
nutrients in the water. The excess nutrients in turn favor the bloom
of harmful algae, which eventually depletes the oxygen in the water
and causes fish kills.
Taal Lake was declared a protected area in 1996
under the National Integrated Protected Area System Act. By then
there were already fish cages in the lake. Yet instead of declining
in number after Taal Lake came under that act, the fish cages
proliferated. In 1993, there were only 1,601 fish cages in the lake;
today the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources reported there
are 9,188.
Loopholes in the law and a focus on profits on
the part of operators and local officials apparently made this
possible.
Legal experts point out that as a protected
area, Taal Lake has no municipal waters. This means every
development in the lake requires not just a mayor’s permit but
also an environmental compliance certificate from the Environmental
Management Bureau and a clearance from the Protected Areas
Management Board, which is headed by the Department of Environment
and Natural Resources.
But the lake’s management board remained in an
“interim” capacity until 2006, and failed to craft a lake-wide
ordinance that would have at the very least set a limit on the
number of fish cages, as well as standards regarding stocking
capacity.
Fisheries experts also said forcing fish-cage
operators like Llona and Carandang to undergo seminars and workshops
on fish farming—and constantly monitoring them to ensure they
follow correct procedures—would have spared the lake much of its
present problems.
According to aquaculturist Josephine de la Vega,
the operators usually go over the 30,000 to 50,000 stocking density
per cage that is recommended by the bureau of Fisheries.
There are fish cages in five of the 16 towns and
cities surrounding Taal Lake—Agoncillo, Talisay, San Nicolas,
Laurel, and Mataas na Kahoy. Operators there confirm that they stock
around 100,000 to 250,000 fish per cage.
“Anticipating a fish kill, the operators would
double the number of stocks in a cage,” freshwater biologist Dr.
Lourdes Castillo explained. But she said many of the fish die
precisely because they were overstocked.
The operators also believe that figuring out how
much to feed the fish is a matter of common sense. “You just have
to estimate the feeds, and wait until the fish eat them,” Llona
said.
Feeds and fish feces lead to fish kills
Experts said, however, that at least 40 percent
of the feeds end up at the lake bottom along with fish feces. Both
add to the nutrients in the lake that stimulate excessive plant
growth, otherwise known as algal blooms. These in turn reduce
dissolved oxygen in the water, causing other organisms, including
fish, to die.
“We have repeatedly given them seminars and
trainings, but they continue with their practice,” said Leah
Villanueva, chief of the Fisheries bureau’s Inland Fisheries
Research Station in Tanauan City. “We can only offer technical
assistance.”
The bureau clarifies that pre-fish cage Taal
Lake was no stranger to fish kills, which were then usually caused
indirectly by a seasonal overturn with sulfur upswelling. Sulfur is
an element usually present in volcanic waters like Taal Lake. But
the bureau said that the fish kills then were not as frequent as
they are today, and not as massive. It added that since the
fish-cage industry peaked in 1998, fish kills have occurred in Taal
Lake annually, both in fish cages and open waters.
Wind energy, such as the southwest monsoon,
stirs up the lake’s waters and spreads the nutrients and other
pollutants that later lead to ecological disasters like fish kills,
experts explained.
But fisherman Leo Aranel, who is chairman of
Aligtagtag town’s Municipal Fisheries and Aquatic Resources
Management Council, said he knows exactly where the major blame
lies: “The problem here is that the municipal governments keep on
accepting fish-cage applications as long as there are spaces
available in the lake.”
That may be partly because local governments
earn from issuing fish-cage permits. Talisay, for one, imposes a P2
lake-use fee per square meter of fish cage, while Mataas na Kahoy
town charges a yearly lake-use fee of P400 per fish cage.
Politics over pollution
The town of San Nicolas collects an annual P5
lake-use fee per square meter of fish cage. It also imposes a P40
payment for the mayor’s permit, P260 for business tax, and P25 for
a plate number to operate a fish cage.
Yet another fisherman, Eufemio Lubi, said,
“They are always thinking of their political career, that the
people might not vote for them [if they dismantle the cages] and
somebody would get mad at them.”
“That’s why the lake is getting polluted,”
said a visibly angry Lubi, who believes fish farming is to blame for
the strange rusty color of the lake during summer months. “If they
aren’t always thinking of their political career, we wouldn’t
have this many fish cages.”
Once the lake turns an orange-red color, experts
said, that indicates algal bloom. Yet they said that in Taal Lake,
the problem is not necessarily the number of fish cages but in the
practices of overstocking and overfeeding.
“We cannot control the natural processes [like
wind] which spread the pollutants in the lake,” said bureau of
Fisheries aquaculturist Maurita Rosana. “But by following the
recommended cage stocking density and feeding practices [in fish
cage operations], we could reduce the number of nutrients that
trigger pollutants in the lake.”
The official number of fish cages in Taal Lake
– 6,796 – last year does overshoot the 6,000 recommended by
fisheries experts for it, as does the bureau’s latest count of
9,188. But local government insiders and observers alike note that
the area the cages occupy is still well under the legal limit set by
the Philippine Fisheries Code.
The Code says that to prevent the quality of the
country’s lakes from deteriorating, fish cages should occupy at
most only 10 percent of the total lake area. According to Calabarzon
Director Rosa Macas, fish cages occupy 500 hectares or 2 percent of
Taal Lake.
Then again, the limit does not really apply to
Taal Lake since the Code exempts lakes declared as protected areas
from the definition of municipal waters.
In March 2007, the Taal Volcano Protected
Landscape-Protected Area Management Board finally approved a Unified
Rules and Regulations for Fisheries that limits the number of fish
cages in the lake to 6,000 and within designated fish-cage zones.
The unified rules also specify areas as fish
sanctuaries for native fishes to breed, regulate the use of fishing
gear, and enforce other rules relative to Taal Lake’s biodiversity
conservation.
But Environment Secretary Lito Atienza has
refused to sign it unless it says there would be no fish cages in
Taal Lake after a phase-out period.
Small fry vs. big fish
Local officials counter that they need to
protect the livelihood of the locals who engage in fish-cage
operations. Mataas na Kahoy Mayor Danilo Sombrano, whose town has
the least number of fish cages in Taal Lake at 72, said they cannot
just dismantle the fish farms without first thinking of other work
opportunities for the operators. “We have to give them an
alternative job, preferably [in] tourism,” he said.
This is even as small fishermen said the fish
cages are not only helping pollute the lake, but are also robbing
them of their means to make a living. According to the Kilusan ng
Maliliit na mga Mangingisda sa Lawa ng Taal, there are about 3,000
municipal fishermen at Taal Lake.
Aranel said the fish cages have destroyed their
traditional fishing grounds and narrowed their boats’ navigational
lanes. Armed cage guards also suspect small fishers of stealing the
tilapia grown by the fish farmers, he said. According to Aranel, the
guards are even ready to shoot them if they go too near the cages.
Lubi seconds this, saying, “When we go out to
fish, we now have to turn off our boat engines so that the waves
won’t bring us near the cages.”
Aranel pointed out as well that half of what the
local operators earn go to financiers, many of whom are outsiders.
Fish-cage caretaker Llona, for instance, actually earns P200,000 per
harvest, but he turns over 50 percent of that to his financier, whom
he declined to name.
It takes around P500,000 to operate a single
100-square-meter fish cage (the standard size) these days. Thus,
even though the Philippine Fisheries Code and local ordinances give
local residents preferential rights to own a fish cage, many of them
end up only as caretakers of the wealthy and politically connected.
Manuel Matienzo, a member of the Protected Area
Management Board Executive Committee and barangay captain of
Poblacion, for example, is known to own some 70 fish cages. In
Laurel, giant feedmills Welgro Philippines, Sahara Corp., and Tower
Feeds have operated fish cages, exceeding the town’s five-cage
limit. Sahara also had 243 cages in Talisay in 2006.
Outside financiers apparently registered their
fish cages under the names of local residents, a practice that
seemed to be tolerated and even encouraged by some lake
municipalities. San Nicolas Mayor Epifanio Sandoval, whose town has
around 1,187 cages, admitted, “We allowed them provided they would
hire our local residents as feeders and caretakers.”
But he also said, “What happened . . . In the
past was that those who wanted to build cages would do so without
the knowledge of the management board, the barangay, or the local
government units concerned.”
There have been instances as well when fish
cages were built first before its owners bothered to secure permits
from the municipal government concerned.
All these have only led many lakeside residents
and environmentalists alike to believe the local governments around
the lake cannot be entrusted to take care of it.
In late January 2005, in fact, 10 Batangas
mayors signed a covenant vowing to protect Taal Lake. Yet a massive
fish kill later struck at the end of the year, damaging around
3,714.69 metric tons of tilapia.
Poorly enforced ordinances
In the absence of a lake-wide set of rules and
regulations, local governments had also tried to craft their own
ordinances on fish cages. But these were often poorly enforced.
Talisay, for example, has Municipal Ordinance
01-96 establishing a fish-cage belt that is well outside the lake
waters of the Taal Volcano Island. Yet today there are nearly 700
fish cages in these waters.
Officials there said then-Batangas Governor
Hermilando Mandanas had an internal arrangement with the now-defunct
Presidential Commission on Tagaytay-Taal to allow people to put up
cages there. This was even though the Philippine Institute of
Volcanology and Seismology had declared it a permanent danger zone
due to the active Taal Volcano.
For all these, Mataas na Kahoy Mayor Sombrano,
who is a member of the management board’s executive committee,
said, “The mayors are in full control of the cages, and we are
really protecting the lake.”
He may have a hard time convincing Lubi, though.
The Mataas na Kahoy fisherman said he and other fisherfolk have long
wanted to remove the abandoned cages in the town’s part of the
lake. He said these cages now number some 500. But according to Lubi,
the local government has yet to provide the funds for the clean-up
operation.
Ironically, Sombrano may not even have to
convince Vicente Llona that fish cages have not been good for Taal
Lake. The fish-cage caretaker said the business has proved highly
beneficial to him and other operators. He said he has yet to meet
anyone who went into fish cages and failed to prosper. He himself
has been able to buy home appliances such as a television, a
refrigerator and a DVD player from what he makes taking care of the
fish. He now plans to buy a service vehicle to make it easier for
him to deliver his tilapia.
Yet Llona said he is willing to give up fish
farming because he knows fish-cage operations like his have damaged
Taal Lake. He said he has even seen operators dumping plastic bags
and dead fish into the lake, while others defecate straight into the
water.
“Even if this has been my livelihood, it’s
destructive,” Llona said. “It would be painful for us to lose
it, but we can’t insist on continuing if it’s destructive.
Should they ask us to go . . . we request that we be given enough
time to recoup our investments.”
To be continued
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