Our forgotten fishermen

Farming and fishing are our main sources of sustenance. Yet, sad to say, the farmer and the fishermen are the two most neglected groups in our society. We have a national labor day to pay tribute to labor’s contribution to the country, but no day has been set aside to pay equal tribute to the farmer and the fishermen. This is a very clear indication that our elected officials are out of touch with the people they are supposed to represent.

Some people fish for sport. And in Herbert Hoover’s words, it is "the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers," Isaak Walton described fishermen as "meek, quite-spirited men…free from those high, restless thoughts which corrode the sweets of life." Very few crimes are committed by farmers or fishermen.

Two years ago, a Special Research Team of the Southeast-Asia Center for Resource Studies and Training gave this report:

"Next to peasants, the fisherfolk comprise the largest poor sector of Philippine society. Nationwide, there are two million fisherfolk in the country. Two million other Filipinos source their livelihood from fishing-related activities that produce food for more than 50 percent of Filipino households. As an economic enterprise the fishing industry registered four percent contribution to the country’s Gross National Product (GNP) in 1996.

"Despite the importance of the fisheries sector, fish production and the fishing industry in general, has seen rapid decline during the past seven years. From 25 percent contribution to agricultural production in 1990, it went down to 20 percent contribution in 1992 or five percent contribution to GNP in the same year and 4.4 percent respectively in 1992. In 1996 it went down further to only four percent of the GNP. Various studies and profiles on the fishery sector reveal that the main reason for the continuing drastic depletion of the country’s fish resources is not the increasing number of local fisherfolk and population of coastal villages. The radical downtrend in the fisheries production is due to increasing intrusion of big foreign and domestic commercial fishing equipped with modern active fishing gears in strategic Philippine fishing grounds, and municipal waters."

We are very glad that DENR Secretary Heherson Alvarez has taken the initiative to defend the territory of the municipal fishermen from incursions from the outside. It is the so-called big-time fishermen that use illegal fishing means such as dynamite and chemicals that destroy even the small fish and the eggs. It is the small municipal fishermen that really show concern for his environment. His whole future depends on it.

Let us show concern for the most neglected sectors of our society – first and foremost, the streetchildren, then our fishermen and farmers.