SEAWEED FARMING

It is daybreak and the small coastal barangay of Ngolos springs to life. Ngolos lies at the southernmost tip of Sulangan island in the town of Guiuan, Eastern Samar. A flotilla of small boats, some "de sagwan" and others motorized, head off to sea. The boats, ferrying husband and wife teams, fathers and sons, brothers and their wives, grandfathers and grandchildren, went through rows and rows of seaweed plots, bobbing bouys and makeshift floating styrofoam markers. Their destination: a vast seaweed farm that stretches to as far as the eyes can see from the shores of Ngolos all the way across Homonhon Island at the mouth of Leyte Gulf and the Pacific Ocean. The families are on their daily visit to their respective seaweed farms.

The farmers inspect each monoline of seaweed seedlings to rid it of plastic and other foreign matters. These pollutants pose a threat to the survival of the growing seedlings and affect the quality of the harvest, Eusebio "Sebio" Aboymi, 35 years old, a middleman-farmer, points out.

A Family-Based Micro-Enterprise

Seaweed farming in Ngolos is a family-based micro-enterprise, as it is in the rest of the Eastern Visayas, says Arnulfo "Noli" Briones, Region 8 BFAR seaweed action officer. Mang Sebio’s family is one such enterprise, as are the families of his brothers, uncles and cousins and the rest of the barangay. From pre-planting to harvesting, drying to packaging, everybody lends a hand. According to BFAR Region 8 Director Gil Adora, the bureau is promoting the family-based system for seaweed farming to instill a greater sense of stewardship among the families of their coastal resources, these being the source of livelihood for them. Mang Sebio claims that his family and relatives make up more than half of the 120 seaweed farmers in the barangay who make up a loose fisherfolk association.

During the interview of Mang Sebio by this writer, a new Tacloban-based trader delivered buoys, moorings and lines that were distributed to the local fisherfolk association under a contract farming arrangement. Seedlings would likewise be given to the farmers by the trader while the group would supply labor, farm management and maintenance. This means that marketing is not an issue for the association as all harvest would be bought by the trader.

Alternative Income

Barangay Ngolos was a former haven of illegal fishers like Mang Sebio, his relatives and the rest of the community. Most, if not all, of the local fishers were into blast fishing which degraded their coastal resources. These past 10 years, however, seaweed farming has transformed the whole community into stewards of their coastal resources. The new technology has become a harbinger of a new life and has taught the local fishers proper coastal resource management (CRM).

After reluctantly attending a seminar-demo conducted by BFAR, Mang Sebio gained several insights. He realized why the fish catch in their area was declining in terms of both volume and size. He learned of the destructive impact of dynamite and other illegal means of fishing to coral reefs and other fish habitats. More importantly, he realized the imperative of conserving and sustainable development of their remaining coastal resources. And most important of all, he learned that, more than promising a more lucrative alternative livelihood to save fishery, particularly from blast fishing, seaweed farming poses no threat to life and limb. And who could contest him? He lost one finger to dynamite fishing.

Seaweed farming has increased family incomes and brought improvements in the fisherfolk’s way of life in Ngolos. As how much a farmer earns per harvest depends whether he sells his produce either in fresh or wet form for seedling purposes at P8/kg or in dried form, at P28 to 30/kg for further processing as additive to food, beverage, pharmaceuticals and other purposes. The conversion ratio of wet to dried seaweeds is seven to one, said Noli Briones.

Mang Sebio’s farm produces mainly seedling materials. He takes pride in saying that Ngolos is now the sole supplier of all the seaweed seedling needs of Region 8. The income he derives from seaweed farming is far greater than what he used to earn from illegal fishing, Mang Sebio points out. As former seafood restaurant worker in Manila, he used to earn only P180/day and as former illegal fisher back home in Guiuan, he used to catch only about five kilos per fishing trip.

This is a far cry from what he is making now. According to Mang Sebio, most of the farmers in Ngolos operate 10 lines and earn at least P10,000/line/harvest every three months. Since he operates a 60-line farm, he earns a total of P60,000 per harvest and because seaweed farming is year-round, his total earnings from the venture is P240,000 per year. Add to this the profit he gains from acting as middleman. He buys all the dried produce of his fellow farmers in the barangay at the prevailing price of P28 to P29/kg and sells them to the bulk buyer at P30/kg. His daily purchase averages to at least three 10-kg sacks or a total of 30 kgs, which he keeps in bulk storage in his nipa hut until the buyer arrives.

Once a week for the past ten years or so, Mang Sebio supplied a truckload equivalent to 5 tons of dried produce to a Cebu trader. A truck contracted by the trader would bring the produce to Tacloban and then transported them to Cebu. Henceforth, Mang Sebio would buy all the group’s produce and sell them solely to a new trader from Tacloban who is said to be the buying arm of a Batangas-based seaweed exporter.

To augment his income from seaweeds, he operates two floating cages for sea bass culture near the shore from which he harvests about 100 pieces with weights varying from 0.5 to 0.9 kilos each. At the prevailing price of P1,200/kg of live fish, also earning him a net of about P60,000 per harvest from each cage or a total of P120,000 per year.

From Bahay Kubo To Bahay Na Bato

Indeed, there is money in seaweed farming and in fish cage farming, Mang Sebio says. Ten years after having stopped illegal fishing and turned to year-round seaweed farming and a monocrop on sea-bass farming, Mang Sebio’s old fragile "bahay-kubo" of nipa and bamboo with dirt flooring has been replaced with a "bahay na bato" complete with appliances such as a television, karaoke and refrigerator, among others. In addition, he now owns two motorized bancas.

Balancing Productivity With Sustainability

Seaweed farming is one mariculture activity being pushed by the Fisheries Resources Management Project of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (FRMP-BFAR) as an income diversification and enterprise development venture, and as a deterrent to commercial operators encroaching into municipal waters, BFAR Director Malcolm Sarmiento says. The other is fish cage culture in floating cages.

These alternative livelihood technologies are also environment-friendly, he adds. In addition to seaweed farming, BFAR Region 1 Director Nestor Domenden is one with Sarmiento in saying that the fishers’ shift from capture fisheries in municipal waters to mariculture like sea bass culture in floating cages and seaweed farming, allows the sea to rest and for depleted resources to regenerate. Through these alternative livelihood technologies, local fishers could then balance productivity with coastal resource management (CRM), Sarmiento points out.

Saving The Seas, Saving The Future

The FRMP is a six-year undertaking of DA-BFAR to reverse the trend in fisheries resources depletion and in alleviating the widespread poverty among marginal fisherfolk. The project covers 100 coastal municipalities in 18 bays in 11 regions nationwide, according to FRMP Director Jessica Munoz.

There are three components of the project: 1) fisheries resources management (FRM); 2) income diversification and enterprise development (ID-SE); and 3) capacity building. FRM includes such activities as resource enhancement projects (REPs), licensing and law enforcement, information, education and communication (IEC).

ID-SE includes community organizing and livelihood training, among them seaweed farming. Capacity building covers institution building, organization development and human resources skills training. Now on its sixth year, FRMP is funded by loans from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) with counterpart funds from the national and local governments.