Seabass project reaps good harvest
Hamtic, Antique -- Five months of culture. About 200 pieces of seabass, weighing a total 83 kilograms or nearly half-kilo each fish. Suddenly, a dream project becomes reality.
Early this month, on February 2, the top managers of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC), a research institution based in Iloilo, traveled to Hamtik, Antique to be part of the first partial harvest of seabass under SEAFDEC's project on "Institutional Capacity Building on Sustainable Aquaculture" with Hon. Congressman Exequiel Javier.
This project, dubbed the dream project, directly brings technical assistance to local government units in the Philippines. For Antique, the requested assistance was seabass culture after an on-site visit by SEAFDEC staff determined its suitability. Cong. Javier gave half a million pesos from his Countryside Development Fund.
Commencing early in the morning, the first partial harvest was overseen by Mr. Carlo Javier, from weighing to recording of stocks. The AQD Chief Dr. Joebert Toledo and dream project leader Mr. Renato Agbayani were on hand to provide technical assistance during the entire process. The harvested seabass was brought to Manila by RORO. [In Roxas City, seabass sells for around P200 a kilo.]
The Antique dream project began with the conduct of a three-day onsite training course for 10 pond technicians in the same venue last August 2-4. SEAFDEC taught the technicians how to construct netcages measuring 3 m x 2 m x 1.3 m; how to stock, feed, and sort or size-grade seabass. The on-site course culminated with the technicians stocking fingerlings in the very cages that they constructed.
The stocked seabass fingerlings, initial sizes were between 1- to 3-1/2 inches, were fed with trash fish and formulated diet. The fingerlings came from SEAFDEC's own fish hatchery.
With the first successful partial harvest, the pond sites located in Barangay Pu-ao and Barangay Bocboc are now considered demonstration sites of SEAFDEC's seabass culture technology.
SEAFDEC's dream project on sustainable aquaculture has the main goal of empowering aquatic resource users by providing them knowledge to become efficient managers and prudent users of their resources. Not only Antique is on-board, the Capiz Provincial Government, too, under Governor Vicente Bermejo has signed an agreement with SEAFDEC last November 16 and has ear-marked P2.66 million for the dream project. Ilocos Norte is currently in talks to do the same.