SEAFDEC/AQD Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center | Aquaculture Department

    ROXAS City – To boost the local aquaculture industry, SEAFDEC/AQD Chief Dan Baliao said abandoned and underutilized hatcheries in the province should be rehabilitated to produce much-needed crablets and fish fry. He said this during a dialogue with local fish farmers who aired that there were not enough suppliers of crablets that they seed into their fishpond. “The problem here in Capiz is that our crablets come from Bicol, Sarangani, and Cagayan Valley. How about us here in Capiz?” asked Ma. Cristina Dyna Honrado, vice-chair of the Capiz Aquaculture Producers Cooperative. Other fish farmers acknowledged that while the SEAFDEC/AQD hatchery, based in nearby Iloilo, can supply crablets, the volume is still not enough, so they end up buying …

SEAFDEC/AQD is promoting a simple technology to address the perennial shortage of milkfish fry that continues to hound fish farmers in the Philippines during the colder months of the year.

There are not enough catfish in the “Catfish Country” of Zarraga, Iloilo, but recent findings in one farm may just be the catalyst that could catapult the fish into abundance. Zarraga Pantat Fingerlings was one of the many farms struggling to keep pace with buyers’ demands while itself suffering from many catfish eggs that fail to hatch and catfish fry that die before they can be sold to other farmers that grow them in ponds.     Larry Pañoso, the hatchery operations in-charge, said that they achieved a breakthrough in January when  their production reached an all-time high of 500,000 fry per week after the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center Aquaculture Department (SEAFDEC/AQD) helped resolve a problem with their water …

SEAFDEC/AQD is nearing the completion of two multi-species hatcheries and a milkfish broodstock facility at its research complex in Tigbauan, Iloilo. These priority infrastructure projects are being built to intensify demonstration and techno-transfer programs, as well as to help address the shortage of aquaculture seeds in the Philippines, the host country of the research center.

Just off Molocaboc Island, beneath a turquoise canopy of water, fishers search the coral reef to pick out abalone and sea cucumber, two prized delicacies in Asian cuisine. Live abalone sells abroad for up to $120 or approximately P5,700 a kilo, and dried sea cucumber, $2000 or about P96,000 a kilo. But the fishers are not here to cash in on the abalone grazing on coralline substrates and the sea cucumber burrowing in the white sand. Not yet. They carefully weigh and size them, log the numbers in a notebook, and return them to the reef to continue to grow and reproduce. During the formative years of the sea ranching project, the fisherfolks asked when they will benefit from the …