‘Kuyug’: Calatagan’s famous fish

By Jonathan L. Mayuga

CALATAGAN , a once sleepy agricultural and fishing municipality in Batangas, is now a certified tourist magnet. Thanks to “kuyug,” the area’s famous fish.

Kuyug, rabbitfish in English, or “samaral” in Filipino, is more popularly known as “danggit” in the Visayas which is mostly dried and exported by Cebu.

Like Cebu, known for its thriving dried fish business, Calatagan is blessed with the economically important fish.

What is kuyug?

RABBITFISHES are medium-sized herbivorous fish native to the Indo-Pacific region,” explained environmentalist Gregg Yan. There are 28 known rabbitfish species, which thrive in shallow coastal areas.

They are popular food fish, with wild-capture fisheries supplying the bulk of production.

Indonesia and the Philippines are the planet’s top rabbitfish suppliers, with 2021 landings of around 76,000 tons and 25,000 tons, respectively, according to United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (UN-FAO) data.

“The high demand for these species is causing overfishing and a decline in wild stocks. Thus, developing efficient and sciencebased ways to culture rabbitfish has become ever more urgent,” Yan said.

Last year Yan co-authored a UN-FAO paper titled, “Rabbitfish Farming in Asia,” along with Dutch fisheries experts and environmental advocates Jonan van Beijnen and Kyra Hoevenaars.

Dried kuyug

CALATAGAN is a known producer of its version of dried kuyug.

Its Mayor Peter Oliver Palacio aptly described it as “malinamnam at malaman [tasty and meaty].”

The secret: “Unlike in other areas, our dried kuyug is meaty. Because we don’t dry them under the sun or solar dry too much,” he told the B usiness M irror in Filipino. Of course, the municipality’s public market also sells fresh kuyug. But market vendors prefer to dry in answer to the big demand from the tourism sector.

Rabbitfish thrive only in healthy coastal and marine environments, which can be found in Calatagan, some 131 kilometers from Manila.

In the entire Batangas province, Calatagan is the only place where kuyug can be found thriving.