Filipino Fish Farmers Amidst Climate Disturbance

Phillip L. Ong

Earlier this year, the world was transfixed as forest fires raged across the redwood forests in California, razing beautiful homes and vineyards while people fled for their lives and thousands of weary firefighters battled the blazes. The fires were horrifying to Filipinos who had relatives in California. Filipinos also wondered how global temperature changes would affect their fish farmers and their food security on the other side of our planet.

For the last several years, fish hatcheries in Pampanga Province, 70 km north of the capital, Manila, had been experiencing difficulty in breeding during the dry season. The unusually high temperatures of the summer months had caused the breeders to stop spawning. Many of these hatcheries have either ceased operations or have relocated to the cooler areas of the lake province.

The inverse of the hot summer for Filipinos is the rainy season. Rains come in July and with them, hurricanes – known to us as typhoons. As children, we enjoyed the surprise holidays when school was called off when a visiting typhoon had wind speeds exceeding 120 km/hr. It was not safe to be out at winds of these speeds, but there were not many of these typhoons with such strength. That was decades ago. This year, with the country in the midst of suffering from COVID-19 and its related lockdown and unemployment, three consecutive typhoons hit the Philippines in October and November: Typhoon Quinta (Molave) with maximum winds of 195 km/hr, Typhoon Rolly (Goni) with maximum winds of 315 km/hr, and Typhoon Ulysees (Vamco) with winds of 215 km/hr. These successive typhoons devastated large parts of the country.

Along with the typhoons, continuous rains caused far-reaching floods in Luzon, the largest island of the Philippines. Farmers in Pampanga, who had gotten their fish seeds late in the season, had not yet harvested their crop. They lost much of their hard wrought production to the waters flowing from aging dams that could not hold the volume of the downpour.

I am not an expert on climate change. Nor do I have access to the data accumulated by scientists who explore the Arctic for methane emissions, measure seawater rise, and track hurricanes and forest fires. Yet I strongly suspect that these recent typhoons as well as the earlier dry hot season are manifestations of a globally linked web of factors caused by a warming planet. In the last decade, the Philippines has suffered some of the most ferocious typhoons in history. The largest of these super typhoons was Yolanda (Haiyan) in 2013, which caused the death of more than 6,000 persons and left a million homeless. The next was 2016 typhoon Ferdie (Meranti), which also packed winds of over 310 km/hr.

Climate cycles are hard to attribute to any one factor because our views are limited, while the global weather system is a fabric of interlinked butterfly flutters. Some non-believers see extreme climate occurrences, such as three strong typhoons in two weeks as a result of chance. They reason that this clustered mishap was bound to happen to a Pacific archipelago which has been in the way of twenty typhoons a year.

The Philippines continues to survive under these risky climate conditions. Fishing is still a main livelihood for many in coastal communities. These municipal fishermen produce 45% of the country’s marine catch. Coastal communities are also the most vulnerable to typhoons. Even when boats are docked onshore, large waves caused by these typhoons easily destroy flimsy wooden vessels.

Fish supply in the Philippines is roughly 3 million tons – two thirds from marine catch and a third from farming. Weather events and overfishing have caused the marine catch to level off over the last few decades, and the future source of our fish supply is now centered on farming. Unlike China, with their centuries old tradition in inland aquaculture, the Philippines aqua farming industry is still in its infancy. Fish farming largely depends on stable weather conditions to survive. With progressively unstable weather conditions, the Philippine fish farming industry has nevertheless grown by farming in the sea with the practice of mariculture. With investments in stronger high-density polyethylene (HDPE) fish cages, the commercial fish farming sector is attempting to cope with the uncertainties of nature.

Strong typhoons are but one of the effects attributed to climate change. Rising sea levels are also threatening to inundate many coastal municipalities around the world. For the Philippines, this risk is a stark reality. The Philippine National Mapping and Resource Information Authority has reported consistent sea level increases all over the country for the last decade. The cumulative increase in sea level over the last 10 years has been about 6 inches.

The Earth has never had so many people breathing, consuming, and discharging waste. Seven billion people on this planet must have some effect on the air, the water, the balance of gases, and the temperature. The majority of these 7 billion have not yet gained access to the lifestyle enjoyed by the privileged. Environmentally harmful conveniences are “dreams” seen daily by these “developing” consumers in commercials and social media. They want to be a part of it, but these goals will further accelerate rising world temperatures and climate disturbances.

I would like to believe that given our new awareness of climate effects on people’s lives, we will be doing something to avert a catastrophe. In the meantime, our Filipino fishermen go about their livelihood under clouds of ever-increasing risks of rising summer temperatures and the next ferocious typhoon.

Phillip L. Ong, Chairman, Philippine Chamber of Agriculture and Food Inc., Aquaculture Entrepreneur, Advocate of Sustainable Aquaculture