Saving Seafood

Another Challenge for Conservation Efforts: Gender Inequity

November 17, 2021 — When the fisherman leveled his spear gun and fired at her across the dark water, Evelyn Malicay held her ground in her kayak, gripping a stone to defend herself. This was her backyard, the marine sanctuary she had helped create and felt a duty to protect.

The spear missed. Ms. Malicay’s efforts to catch yet another late-night poacher did not. “What they do not know,” she said, recalling that night several years ago when she called the police on the man, “is that I am always on watch.”

Ms. Malicay, 53, a compact, vibrant Filipina mother who years ago lost her village council seat over her support for the Maite Marine Sanctuary, has since apprehended neighbors and relatives fishing inside it, recruited dozens of community members to back her and won numerous awards for her championship of marine conservation.

The sanctuary, just steps away from her home, is one of the most successful of the 22 marine protected areas on the island of Siquijor in the south-central Philippines, at the heart of the species-rich Coral Triangle. This no-fishing zone shares one uncommon asset with a variety of other unusually successful conservation projects around the globe: It’s run by women.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Overwhelmed by Chinese Fleets, Filipino Fishermen ‘Protest and Adapt’

July 12, 2021 — The fishermen along the western coast of Luzon Island, in the Philippines, have known for generations that the seas, the tides and the weather can determine their fortunes. More recently, they have added China to that list.

Scarborough Shoal, a nearby triangular chain of reefs and rocks in the South China Sea, was once the source of bountiful catches of large reef fish. But the fishermen are no longer allowed to go near it.

“The Chinese have already swallowed Karburo whole, but that area is really ours,” said Johnny Sonny Geruela, using the Filipino name for Scarborough. Mr. Geruela lives in Masinloc, a small fishing community just 124 nautical miles from the shoal.

China’s Coast Guard has had ships anchored near Scarborough for almost a decade. Five years ago this week, an international court ruled that the territory was well within Manila’s exclusive economic zone, and invalidated China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea. Beijing has effectively ignored the ruling and expanded its presence in the region.

Filipino fishermen like Mr. Geruela now avoid the shoal, where they once sheltered during storms, exchanged greetings and cigarettes, and harvested the abundant reef fish. And the lessons of Scarborough are playing out elsewhere in the South China Sea, as China continues to flex its muscle on the water and pursue power through a campaign of steady provocation.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Philippines approves USD 10 million COVID-related stimulus for aquaculture sector

December 28, 2020 — The Philippines Department of Agriculture has allocated an additional budget of PHP 500 million (USD 10.4 million, EUR 8.5 million) to assist the country’s aquaculture sector in overcoming difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The stimulus package will support farming of certain fish and aquatic species such as glass eels, sea urchins, and seaweeds, as well as provide funds for construction of multi-species hatcheries in the country, according to a report from The Philippine Star.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Philippine fishermen stranded at sea by pandemic: ‘We think about jumping overboard’

September 11, 2020 — Anthony Medina’s daughter was 5 months old when he left the Philippines and set sail for the Indian Ocean in December 2018 on an odyssey where his livelihood collided with a pandemic that has kept him adrift at sea and exiled from home.

For more than a year, his days have been a monotonous blur of endless fishing on the Oceanstar 86, a 465-foot-long vessel with a crew of about three dozen. As long as there was seafood for their nets, including tuna, crab and squid, the crew members had to haul them in, clean and freeze them.

When their boat arrived in Singapore in March, Medina planned on catching a flight home. But he was shocked to learn that a virus outbreak had closed borders and shuttered ports, keeping him out of the Philippines and trapped on the fishing boat.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

Why marine protected areas are often not where they should be

March 26, 2020 — There’s no denying the grandeur and allure of a nature reserve or marine protected area. The concept is easy to understand: limit human activity there and marine ecosystems will thrive.

But while the number of marine protected areas is increasing, so too is the number of threatened , and the health of  is in decline.

Why? Our research shows it’s because marine protected areas are often placed where there’s already low , rather than in places with high biodiversity that need it most.

Not where they should be

Many parts of the world’s protected areas, in both terrestrial and , are placed in locations with no form of manageable human activity or development occurring, such as fishing or infrastructure. These places are often remote, such as in the centres of oceans.

And where marine protected areas have been increasing, they’re placed where pressures cannot be managed, such as areas where there is increased ocean acidification or dispersed pollution.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Clashing views ahead of tuna fleet crisis meeting

November 13, 2019 — Tuna industry leaders have different views on the best way to solve the current market crisis.

Some of the world’s biggest tuna fishing fleets are set to meet “face-to-face” on Nov. 13 in Manila, Philippines, as record low prices are seen as unsustainable for most tuna fleets.

The World Tuna Purse Seine Organization (WTPO) should close the whole fishery in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean for one month or one month and a half, according to the head of a European fishing company.

“They should stop all the vessels for a month or a month and a half from now until Chinese New Year to stop overproduction and stabilize the market,” he told Undercurrent News, adding that even the canneries would support such a measure, as it would provide market stability. In this way, skipjack prices would return to a minimum of $1,000 per-metric-ton, he also noted, adding that the fleets in the Western Pacific should be “responsible and take steps to stop the vessels, restarting the logistics chain”. At present, there is too much fish and the logistic chain is paralyzed, he noted.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

China playing public relations game focused on cooperative conservation

July 22, 2019 — The vigor with which the government has prosecuted its crackdown in domestic waters has certainly been unprecedented this year in China – it seems that every village government in the country has had a publicity event that involves pouring bags of fish seedlings into local waters.

China appears to also be playing a clever public relations game by embracing neighbors in joint fisheries rehabilitation projects that are also helping to keep a lid on simmering disputes over territorial waters and illegal fishing.

For instance, last week, a delegation of Filipino fishery officials led by the deputy head of the agriculture and fishery ministry in Manila travelled to Beijing for the third annual “China Philippines United Fishery Committee.” The meeting was a recap on all that’s been achieved in three years of activity, according to a Chinese summary of the meeting featured prominently in local media reporting.

“China continues to donate grouper fish seedlings to the Philippines…we have been training Filipino fishermen in aquaculture and algae technology and we are together fighting illegal fishing,” noted a statement from the Chinese ministry. China and the Philippines are working together to resolve any territorial disputes, according to the ministry.

Meanwhile, Chinese state TV didn’t devote much air time to the update from the arbitral tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which found in favor of Manila’s case against Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea in July 2016. Convened under the compulsory dispute settlement provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the tribunal’s five arbitrators ruled overwhelmingly in the Philippines’ favor. Three years on, China is in compliance with just two out of the 11 parts making up the ruling.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Group detects illegal-fishing activities during Visayan Sea’s closed season

February 19, 2019 — Oceana Philippines expressed alarm over probable illegal-fishing activities in the Visayan Sea during the enforcement of the three-month closed fishing season.

The international organization made the pronouncement after analyzing data from satellite sensor called Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) to detect by satellites, in a supposedly dark environment such as large bodies of water, artificial light sources like superlights.

Ocena said these are likely used by fishing boats, such as purse seiners and ring netters, and were found inside the prohibited area and in this case, the Visayan Sea covered by the closed fishing season order.

According to the VIIRS data during the three-month period prior to the Visayan Sea closed season, from August 16 to November 14, 2018, the monthly average of lights detected in the delineated area was 142.  Oceana said during the three-month closed season from November 15, 2018 to February 14, the monthly average was 48.

Oceana said these were detected in the Visayan Sea off Iloilo, in the municipalities of Carles, Concepcion, Barotac Viejo and Aruy; Cadiz City, Negros Occidental; and in Madridejos and Bantayan in Cebu.

Read the full story at the Business Mirror

In the Philippines, Dynamite Fishing Decimates Entire Ocean Food Chains

June 18, 2018 — Nothing beats dynamite fishing for sheer efficiency.

A fisherman in this scattering of islands in the central Philippines balanced on a narrow outrigger boat and launched a bottle bomb into the sea with the ease of a quarterback. It exploded in a violent burst, rocking the bottom of our boat and filling the air with an acrid smell. Fish bobbed onto the surface, dead or gasping their last breaths.

Under the water, coral shattered into rubble.

The blast ruptured the internal organs of reef fish, fractured their spines or tore at their flesh with coral shrapnel. From microscopic plankton to sea horses, anemones and sharks, little survives inside the 30- to 100-foot radius of an explosion.

With 10,500 square miles of coral reef, the Philippines is a global center for marine biodiversity, which the country has struggled to protect in the face of human activity and institutional inaction. But as the effects of climate change on oceans become more acute, stopping dynamite and other illegal fishing has taken on a new urgency.

Read the full story at the New York Times

URI Leads Effort To Reform Commercial Fisheries in the Philippines

April 25, 2018 — Researchers at the University of Rhode Island are leading a new project in the Philippines to increase the number of fish in their waters.

The Philippines is one of the biggest fish producing nations in the world. The U.S., for example, depends on the country for crab and tuna.

However, the majority of their fishing grounds are overfished, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, a U.S.-based environmental advocacy organization.

URI and other Filipino universities and organizations will be working throughout the next five years to develop better fishery management plans for municipalities.

Read the full story at Rhode Island Public Radio