Bangus capital suffers fry shortage

DAGUPAN CITY, Philippines – While the province of Pangasinan prides itself as the best producer of milkfish with this city touted as the Bangus Capital of the world, there is a shortage of bangus fry.

Westly Rosario, center chief of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources and interim executive director of the National Integrated Fisheries Development Technology Center, said this problem has been sounded off by officials of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

Rosario said he met some JICA experts visiting here to evaluate their project on comprehensive fish breeding project related to bangus.

He added the experts came to see if the project undertaken with JICA for five years was effective.

Rosario said five years ago, the JICA project was envisioned to improve the hatchery capability of the BFAR Center here and other targeted provinces like Mindoro, Bulacan, Pampanga and Pangasinan.

He said they had improved their hatchery protocol and gave training to various provinces, including the culture of fry in fishponds.

But after five years, Rosario said the situation did not improve.

“It did not improve especially on the aspect of being self-sufficient in bangus fry,” he said.

Rosario said they could not exactly determine the number or volume of fry needed, as some claim it is about 800 million to more than one billion a year for the entire Philippines.

In Pangasinan alone, the need is already high, although there are two hatcheries in the province, one in Sual, which is privately owned producing about 35 million fry, and the BFAR in Dagupan producing about 15 million.

Rosario said climate change is affecting their production of bangus fry.

The Department of Trade and Industry also had its program that focused on bangus.

“We taught those from Pangasinan about backyard production of bangus fry,” Rosario said.

Unfortunately, no one from among those given seminars and lectures and site visitation of a hatchery they built in Dumangas, Iloilo has adopted backyard hatchery production, he added.

“Probably JICA can also help us fund the putting up of techno-demo hatchery,” he said.

Rosario said the Philippines had to import bangus fry from Indonesia where backyard hatchery is widely practised.

Adding to the problem is the cheaper price of imported fry which, Rosario said, discourages aquaculture businessmen from venturing into fry hatchery.

Imported bangus fry costs about 10 centavos each while locally produced fry ranges from 20 to 30 centavos for 18 days from egg size.

“So if they can do backyard hatchery, why can’t we adopt it?” he asked.

He added imported bangus fry have lower survival rate compared to locally produced because of the stress factor.

“But Filipinos patronize cheaper products,” he said, adding they do not correctly count the cost after factoring in the survival aspect and overall production cost.