Cosmic justice

IT’S ALMOST cosmic justice that milkfish (bangus) growers who have lost hundreds of tons of the fresh-water fish and other varieties to the fishkill that have plagued Batangas and Pangasinan have had to feed their losses to crocodiles in croc farms. They themselves could be the crocs battening on the dead fish. Eager to drive up their profit, the owners in seven towns around Taal Lake in Batangas—Talisay, Laurel, Agoncillo, San Nicolas, Alitagtag, Cuenca and Sta. Teresita—have congested the lake with fish pens, “stacked double-deck,” in the words of Agriculture Secretary Proceso Alcala, so that with the sudden drop in the lake water’s oxygen level, the fish were asphyxiated. Fish losses in Batangas as of June 1 have been placed at nearly 1,000 metric tons, valued at around P76 million. Meanwhile, wholesalers in Dagupan, Binmaley and Mangaldan have seen their sales drop as a result of the fishkill because consumers are fearful that the Pangasinan public markets are selling twice-dead fish from Anda. Although Pangasinan fishpens hardly crowd the vast Lingayen Gulf, their numbers also need to be rationalized.

What has happened is the worst fishkill in recent years. A combination of environmental factors and manmade miscalculation has caused the disaster. The fish-pen overcrowding, the sudden drop in the water’s oxygen level, and pollution, all contributed to the fishkill, experts said. As of the weekend, Taal Lake, where thousands of fish cages have been set up, is not yet fit to raise fishes because the dissolved oxygen in the lake was still 3.71 parts per million (ppm), still way below from the acceptable 6 ppm, fishery officials said. The agriculture department has loaned 50 pumps to aerate the lake for fish to breathe. It would take one or two months for the lake’s water to stabilize, experts said.

Although Batangas officials have denied that the fishkill was caused by overcrowding, it is striking that Taal Lake is dotted with fish pens beyond its capacity to host and sustain them. Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda said Taal Lake is a protected area. In 2009, the lake’s protected area management board recommended that its 14,000 fish cages be reduced to 6,000. “Unfortunately some disregarded this order and so as a result we have this recent phenomenon of fishkill,” he said.

What’s not mentioned by officials and fishery experts is that despite having been a protected area, Taal continues to host several milkfish pens that crowd out the lowly but tasty tawilis, which is endemic to the lake. Surely protection should take into account that species endemic to the area are not displaced in the eager rush of fish-pen owners and fish traders to cash in on the demand for milkfish and other species that are a favorite in the public markets.

Of course it could be argued that the fish-pen owners and fish traders are merely satisfying consumer demand. And it may be that in the race to satisfy that demand, considerations of ecology, symbiosis and sustainability are sacrificed. If that happens, as indeed it seems to be already, government should step in and apply the breaks, to regulate the industry, and to enforce rules that will check abuse and depredation, as well as ensure that the fish that reach the market are safe for human consumption. Apparently, both the national and local governments have grossly failed in this.

The arrant neglect is particularly evident in Taal Lake and the nearby Laguna de Bay, where thousands of illegal fish pens have operated under the very noses of authorities who are supposed to enforce protection-management rules to govern their ecology. Not too long ago, in fact, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources granted an environmental permit to a Korean firm that wanted to put up a spa right in the mouth of the terribly active Taal Volcano! No wonder, environmental officials have failed to dismantle the fish pens in the lake: they are apparently preoccupied with other environmental concerns such as cozying up to Korean businesses wanting to put up a spa in a volcanic zone. It’s also easy to see that the campaign to dismantle illegal fish pens is going nowhere: just look at the heavily polluted Laguna de Bay dotted with fish pen after fish pen.

The fishkill is another powerful reminder to a people with short memory and with hardly any notion of the delicate balance that exists between exploitation and ecosystem that the intricate web of life functions with a mutual complementarity of give-and-take. People should not abuse nature or else nature would strike back.