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Philippines Fishing
The Philippines is surrounded by a vast aquatic resource base
(see Physical Setting
, ch. 2). In 1976 the government adopted a
200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone covering some 2.2
million square kilometers. However, the country's traditional
fishing grounds constituted a relatively small 126,500-squarekilometer area. Fish and other seafood provided more than half
the protein consumed by the average Filipino household. Total
fish production in 1989 was 2.3 million tons. Of this, 46 percent
was caught by some 574,000 municipal and subsistence fishermen,
who operated small boats in shallow water, customarily no more
than three kilometers offshore. These fishermen were among the
poorest of the poor, with incomes averaging only 25 percent of
the national average. Another 27 percent of the catch came from
the approximately 45,000 commercial fishermen. An equal
proportion of the total catch was provided by the fast-growing
aquaculture industry. Prawn production, mostly aquaculture,
developed rapidly in the 1980s, averaging 31,000 tons during the
1984-87 period. In 1988 exports of fishery products amounted to
US$407 million, approximately 6 percent of total exports.
During much of the 1980s, the livelihood of small municipal
and subsistence fishermen was undermined by low production,
stagnating at approximately 1 million tons per year. A number of
factors contributed to the low production: encroachment of
commercial fishermen into shallow waters, destruction of the
marine environment, over-fishing, and an increasing number of
fish ponds. A large proportion of the mangrove forests was
cleared to construct fishponds, seriously damaging the coastal
ecological system. Coral reefs sustained serious damage from
illegal fishing with dynamite and cyanide, and from the
muro-ami fishing technique by which young swimmers pound
the coral with rocks attached to ropes to drive the fish into
nets. Coral also was damaged by silting from erosion caused by
deforestation, and inland freshwater lakes were polluted from
industrial and agricultural wastes.
Data as of June 1991
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