The filter net [tangab] fishery in Iloilo Strait, Philippines: Food and livelihood for coastal communities in the midst of waste of non-target fishery resources

Abstract

The Philippines is home to a mixed of blessings: an enormous marine biodiversity, a tremendous variety of fishery enterprises, and about 50 million coastal residents who mostly fish and eat fish. So many animals and so many nets in the water result in huge total catches of target fishery species, but also unfortunately of ‘trash fish’ — huge numbers of diverse marine larvae, juveniles, small adults, and unwanted species. 'Trash fish' is a category of fisheries bycatch, which as a whole has been estimated to average about 20% worldwide, but difficult to quantify in Philippine fisheries given the large number and variety of fishers, fishing grounds, gears, species, and markets. Moreover, it is difficult to quantify the costs and benefits of a given fishery, and in particular to balance the economic benefits to the coastal communities in terms of food and livelihood versus the ecological costs of catching (killing!) untold numbers of larvae, juveniles, and small adults of innumerable species. Qualitative information is readily available, however, and this article takes as example the case of the filter net or tangab fishery in Iloilo Strait in central Philippines. A typical tangab catch from Iloilo strait is a large mixture of small sizes of low-value and non-marketable species loaded from bagnets into many wooden boxes.