The Philippines Department of Agriculture (DA) has provided a P25-million loan to fisherfolk in Laguna province to help launch a new project to restock Laguna de Bay with fish.
Two hundred fiberglass fishing boats and an initial loan amount of P25-M also marked the launching of the program which seeks to seed the country’s lakes, rivers and creeks with 210-million fingerlings by the end of the term of President Rodrigo R. Duterte in 2022, Agriculture Secretary Emmanuel F. Piñol said in a Facebook post on Tuesday.
The Project Balik Sigla sa Ilog at Lawa (BASIL) was launched in Los Baños on Monday and started with the stocking of five million fingerlings in Laguna de Bay.
In addition, each local government unit involved in the campaign against the predatory Knifefish — now considered by fishermen as a pest preying on fingerlings — was funded with P200,000 worth of incentives for fishermen catching the predators.
The restocking program will also be conducted in other lakes all over the country including Lake Lanao, Lake Naujan, Lake Mainit, Taal Lake, Lake Sebu and Buluan Lake while rivers and creeks are set to be stocked with indigenous fish species and non-invasive species, Mr. Piñol said.
The project was drawn up with the aim of discouraging illegal fishing methods like electric fishing and the use of poison like cyanide.
The country’s lakes, rivers and creeks teemed with freshwater fish species, eels, crablets and shrimps until electric fishing became a fad and almost totally decimated freshwater fish species in recent years, said Mr. Piñol, noting that the project is expected to halt depletion in fishing grounds overfished.
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