Binmaley fishpens ordered dismantled

By Gabriel L. Cardinoza

BINMALEY, Pangasinan -- The mayor of this town has ordered the dismantling of all fishpens and other fishing structures that had proliferated in rivers here the last few weeks.
    In an executive order, Mayor Pedro Merrera 3rd said he ordered concerned barangay (village) captains to immediately dismantle all the fishpens in the rivers traversing their respective villages because "these will cause pollution."
    "I told them not to be afraid, not to think of the coming elections. So, it's up to them now," Merrera also said in an interview.
Fish farmers, who raise bangus (milkfish) in ponds, earlier complained about the pens in the rivers because these will impede the flow of water to and from their ponds.
    When this happens, they said, their stock may die because of lack of dissolved oxygen.
    "There will be massive fishkill," the fish farmers added.
    A pen is basically a fish enclosure made up of nylon screens or nets or attached to bamboo poles staked at the bottom up to the surface of a river.
    Pens crowding a river impede the flow of water from the sea to the ponds and vice versa during high and low tides, reducing the amount of oxygen in the water.
    Water movement mechanically injects oxygen into the water.
    This town criss-crossed by rivers that drain to the Lingayen Gulf, is Pangasinan's largest producer of pond-raised bangus.
    Along with the coastal towns of San Fabian, Lingayen and Labrador and Dagupan City, they supply about 20 percent of the province's annual bangus production, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority's Fisheries Statistics of the Philippines.
    The remaining 80 percent are produced in the pens and cages in the towns of Anda, Bolinao and Sual.
    Vice Mayor Simplicio Rosario said all the pens that have sprouted in the town's rivers are illegal because these are prohibited by a town ordinance and a provincial ordinance approved by the provincial board in 2000.
    This was the reason, he said, why the provincial government dismantled all pens in the different rivers of the province in 2007.
    Rosario said the power to dismantle the pens is vested on the mayor, not on the barangay captains.
    This may be the reason, a fish pond owner said, why the fishpens are still standing in the rivers.