Damage control
The decimation of the Philippines’ fisheries is alarming – and holds grave implications for the rest of the Pacific’s resources.
The Philippines fishery is a dangerously unregulated industry potentially facing a catastrophic end.
After recently assisting in the Philippines on fisheries patrols, I have real concerns that the country’s fishery hangs in the balance. Many warning signs point to an imminent collapse, and little wonder when you examine the many factors affecting this crucial resource. Part of the challenge is that the problems are systemic, widespread and need concerted action on multiple fronts. What follows are some of the most pressing issues I saw, but sadly there are many more. The Duterte government must take command of the problem or the Philippines’ fishery will most certainly be destroyed.
Firstly, there are now large numbers of foreign vessels, especially from Vietnam and Taiwan, pillaging waters south and west of the Philippines respectively. Thankfully, Indonesia has made progress in tackling illegal fishing – Government forces there have sunk literally hundreds of foreign vessels.
This has given the Indonesian fishery a fighting chance, but it has also forced many illegal operators to send their boats north into Filipino waters. The Filipino government must make fisheries a national priority and ensure the pirate fishing vessels are caught (and preferably sunk) or forced out of their waters.
Secondly, there is the nebulous nature of fisheries enforcement in the Philippines. So many agencies are involved – and it allows them to sit back expecting others to do the work. For example, the Bantay
Dagat (local police), local appointees, Maritime Police, Marines, Coastguard, Navy and BFAR all have fisheries responsibilities but most are content to do nothing.
Regional governors are also forming yet more departments to address plummeting fish stocks locally, in part because of inaction by the proper enforcement bodies. There are various suggestions of corruption, incompetence and negligence within many departments, and though there is some truth in this, in many ways it’s poor resourcing and direction from Central Government that’s allowed the situation to flourish.
The government should step in and determine a path forward that sees, in my opinion, Navy and BFAR working jointly and comprehensively on fisheries management, and the responsibility removed from Coastguard and Military Police who in my experience remain corrupt and inept in their operations, and who have little support outside their own fiefdoms.
Linked with this, BFAR must be given increased resources. Currently it pursues but a tiny fraction of offenders because it simply lacks the personnel to do the job. As an example, while on joint patrols in the Batangas region recently, we came across multiple vessels with teams spearfishing using compressors (and inside Marine Protected Areas) at night.
It involved so many violations, and in any other country those men would be facing hefty fines and boat confiscation. Yet all BFAR and our team could do was issue warnings and move on, as we had many worse offenders to pursue.
BFAR personnel say that if they brought in all the illegal fishermen, the impound facility would be overflowing with vessels and the court systems completely bogged down with fishermen. This must change – BFAR must be empowered to bring rampant illegal fishing under control.
In parallel with this, of course, is the Judiciary. The Philippines is trying to address corruption, but there remain countless corrupt officials who should be removed from office. Far too often, the few illegal fishing cases brought before the courts have been thrown out under dubious circumstances. While this continues to happen, the fishery will continue to be plundered.
BFAR and its enforcement partners have a hard time in even bringing cases to court, and it must be completely demoralising to then see its work negated with a single signature from a bribed judge.
DESTRUCTIVE FISHING
A combination of lax enforcement, political indirection, corrupt officials and under-funding has seen the Philippines become ground zero for the many forms of destructive fishing. On patrol, I witnessed them all.
Top of this list is Danish seine – a form of bottom trawling that was banned in 2014. The team I was with apprehended the Dan
Israel R that had been allegedly fishing illegally in municipal waters with Danish seine trawl equipment. This vessel is now impounded and BFAR is proceeding with prosecution, but the sad reality is the Dan
Israel R is just one of many vessels still using the illegal equipment.
Second on the list is blast (dynamite) fishing. It involves home-made bombs exploded underwater, killing large numbers of fish within the blast radius. Corals that have taken hundreds or thousands of years to grow can be obliterated in a matter of seconds, and a 3D seascape rich in biodiversity becomes a barren wasteland.
The Coral Triangle Conservancy has been monitoring blast fishing using sophisticated acoustic equipment, and reports an average of nearly 1,000 blasts every month along just 60km of coastline. A cursory examination of almost every coral area in the Philippines reveals the tell-tale scars of blast fishing.
Another highly-destructive practice is the use of cyanide poison to stun fish. Divers, often using compressors, squirt diluted liquid cyanide into corals, temporarily stunning fish. Small fish are gathered up for the tropical fish trade, a significant export earner for the Philippines.
Larger fish may be injected with amyl
nitrate which increases the survival rate, and these are exported live for the restaurant trade. Cyanide fishing is destructive on so many levels – it kills not just the target fish, but many smaller fish and organisms, as well as the corals. In addition, many of the captured fish subsequently die in transit from cyanide shock.
Then there are the teams using compressors at night. Coral fish – when subject to bright lights – present easy targets for spear fishermen. With compressors fishermen can dive for an entire night and strip an area bare. We caught several teams spearfishing at night in Marine Protected Areas, and the fish they’d taken were as small as 100mm in length.
Another fishing method is using nets with a very small mesh size. The smaller the mesh the smaller the fish it will net. The government’s tried to increase the minimum mesh size allowed, but locals plead poverty and get exemptions. This helps them in the short-term – they can catch lots of small fish – but long-term it leads to degradation of the fishery.
I’ve been to the Philippines many times and writing this article saddens me. I love the place and its people, but its fishery is becoming a basket case. Having worked in fishery enforcement in many places, the problems in the Philippines are staring me in the face.
The situation is dire, but it can be managed. It requires a government with backbone prepared to make hard decisions that will upset some people. There is also the question of how to fund the various elements managing the fishery. It won’t be cheap, but it is small relative to the cost of a destroyed fishery.
BNZ
I love the place and its people, but its fishery is becoming a basket case.