Fish parables

The Bible is filled with parables, stories that have a moral lesson to offer. The parables are simple but memorable stories that have wide appeal because they use metaphors from agriculture (for example seeds and harvests), pastoralism (the good shepherd) and fishing.

My favorite fishing parable is that of Jesus multiplying five loaves of bread and two fish to feed more than 5,000 people.  (The New Testament reflects the gender norms of its time, mentioning “5,000 people, not counting the women and the children.”)

The parable appears in all four gospels, relating how a large crowd had followed Jesus as he healed the sick until they reached a rather forsaken place. Jesus tests his disciples, asking one of them, Philip, how they were going to feed the crowds.  Philip is in despair, pointing out that six months’ wages would not be enough to buy the bread needed to feed the crowd. But Jesus prays over the bread and fish brought over by a little boy, and is able to feed the crowds, not just once but twice, the second time using left-over fragments.

Those who take the Bible literally will say that was an account about Jesus the miracle worker, and use it to say that God will always provide. But there are other commentators and preachers who see the story as an allegory, a symbolic story that speaks of the need to be strong in spirit and faith when following Jesus.

Still another perspective is to see the multiplication as symbolic. The parables do not say the crowds didn’t have any food at all, so perhaps what happened was one boy’s generosity with his meager food inspired others to share as well so that in the end everyone did have something to eat.

Fish kills

I’ve wondered what parables might be produced if Jesus and his disciples lived in our times, here in the Philippines, witnessing the fish kills, not just the current one in Lake Taal, Batangas, but earlier ones in other lakes as well—in Laguna de Bay and Lake Buhi, for example.

Asis Generoso Perez, the director of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) says these fish kills occur regularly as part of changes in the climate. That got me to look up something called “lake upturn.” Usually, a lake should have adequate oxygen for aquatic life, the more oxygen-rich waters found toward the surface, because these are cooler waters. Changes in the weather can lead to “lake upturn,” where warmer, oxygen-poor waters from the bottom are churned upwards, which leads to the fish kill.

So why have the fish kills become so disastrous, involving tons of dead fish?

I found two reports with detailed information that helps us to understand the worsening fish kills. One is an informal essay by retired biologist Dr. Flor Lacanilao about Laguna de Bay, which appeared in an e-group PhilScience; the other is by Rey Donne S. Papa and Augustus C. Mamaril on Lake Taal, which appeared in the online journal Philippine Science Letters (philscilet.org).

Both articles point out that the two lakes used to provide livelihood to small fishermen living in the area.  Fish kills probably occurred but most probably passed unnoticed since the fish and other forms of aquatic life were so dispersed over a large area. Just to give you an idea of the areas we’re talking about, Laguna de Bay extends over 91,000 hectares, and Lake Taal over 26,000 hectares. Even the relatively “small” Lake Buhi has some 1,700 hectares.

We courted disaster when fish pens were introduced into these lakes. In 1971, the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) launched a 38-hectare pilot project for bangus (milkfish) culture. The pilot project succeeded and by 1973, there were 4,800 hectares of fish pens, proliferating further to 31,000 hectares in the next decade. This far exceeded the LLDA’s own predictions in 1971, when it said the lake could take up to 20,000 hectares of milkfish culture.

Problems surfaced even in the early years of bangus culture, with studies warning of potential disasters as early as the 1980s.  The bangus competed with native species of fish for phytoplankton as food. In addition, the bangus were given animal feeds for faster growth, and the sediments from these feeds would settle down to the bottom of the lake, causing pollution.

Most importantly, the fish pens stretched the limits of oxygen supply in the lake because the milkfish were introduced in such large numbers.  This worsened as fish pen concessionaires (I don’t want to call them “owners”) overstocked their cages, sometimes cramming in up to five times more fish than what was recommended.

Not surprisingly, when fish kills occurred, they wiped out thousands of fish, not just bangus but the native species. In the current fish kill in Lake Taal, deaths have also been reported for katang, carp, muwang and biya.  Even shrimps have been affected. Note that these lakes will have life forms found only in that area, examples being tawilis in Lake Taal, which is the world’s only known freshwater sardine.  Lake Buhi, on the other hand, where tilapia farming brought about two large fish kills last year, is home to sinarapan, one of the smallest species of fish in the world.

Tragedy of the commons

These fish kills can be modern parables, warning us of the tragedy of the commons, a term first introduced by American biologist Garrett Hardin in an article published in 1968 in the journal Science.  The term refers to the way individuals, acting independently and on self-interest, end up depleting shared limited resources.

Hardin advocated privatization to rationalize the use of public resources, but our fish kills show us what disasters can happen with privatization. Efforts to regulate private use have failed, even becoming a source of corruption.  The Philippine Fisheries Code of 1998 limits fish pens to only 10 percent of a lake’s area, yet 70 percent of Lake Buhi has fish pens. The LLDA also capped the maximum ownership of fish pens to 50 hectares per concessionaire, yet 10 of the largest fish pen concessions occupy some 4,000 hectares.

One of Hardin’s main arguments was the need for population management, and I’m referring here to humans and not fish. I couldn’t help but think though of how our fish kills show, too, what is happening to human society.  The greed that leads to overstocking is similar to the way society abandons the poor to live in crowded slums, packed like—if I might use another metaphor from fisheries—sardines.

We all know of the problems around public health, nutrition, as well as peace and order in these crowded slums.  Eventually, however, in the same way our lakes are starved for life-giving oxygen, the entire ecosystem—in and out of the crowded slums—suffers as overall quality of life decreases.

Yet, even as the conditions deteriorate as they are now, we continue to hear people claiming there is no population problem: “Kaya pa. Kasya pa.   (We can take more. We’ll all fit.) Here are a few loaves of bread and fish, no botcha bangus please, and leave the rest to God.”