Fishing

Fishing
Overview:
Fishing is the activity of catching fish. Fish are normally caught in the wild. Techniques for catching fish include hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping.
The term fishing may be applied to catching other aquatic animals such as shellfish, cephalopods, crustaceans, and echinoderms. The term is not normally applied to catching aquatic mammals, such as whales, where the term whaling is more appropriate, or to farmed fish.
According to statistics, the total number of fishermen and fish farmers is estimated to be 38 million. Fisheries and aquaculture provide direct and indirect employment to over 500 million people. In 2005, the worldwide per capita consumption of fish captured from wild fisheries was 14.4 kilograms, with an additional 7.4 kilograms harvested from fish farms.
Some Isabelanons use the traditional low-tech method in fishing like hand gathering, spearfishing, netting, angling and trapping.

History:
History of fishing in Isabel is commonly for food and to earn a little amount of money, coz at that time the Matlang Bay and Dupong Bay are full of fish due to low population and no factories the illegal fishing at that time is not yet known. I remember those days, at my young age I see some fishermen bring some food to be spread in the sea so that the sea anito would bring good luck. In catching squid some use human feces to let the squid gather, because cynide and dynamite fishing was introduce in Isabel maybe during the 80’s.
Today the livelihood of our 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.

Fish farms:
Fish farming is the principal form of aquaculture, while other methods may fall under mariculture. It involves raising fish commercially in tanks or enclosures in a fish pen, usually for food. Here in Isabel our most common fish farms are tilapia and milkfish (bangus). Our best supplier of bangus in fish farms is the Philippine Phosphate (Philphos). There we can bought fresh bangus and boneless bangus. The use the cage system of raising the bangus in the sea.