Pangasinan aquaculture practices wow US students

DAGUPAN CITY, Philippines — Students of the University of Rhode Island arrived in Pangasinan on New Year’s eve for their 20-day study of the best aquaculture practices in various coastal areas of the province and got wowed.

From going to the rivers, the 10 students led by their professor Michael Rice experienced demonstration and did hands-on sex determination/cannulation of milkfish breeders and feed preparation/enrichment at the Philippine Bangus Center, seining milkfish broodstock from a maturation pond at the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources center, all in this city.

At the BFAR center, the students also had the opportunity to dip into the bangus pond, harvest bangus and went into the saltwater tilapia pond, harvested fingerlings of saltwater tilapia and went through the exercise of sexing the male and female species. 

They also took a boat ride and explored the fish cages in Sual town very near a power plant and saw the big volume of bangus harvest at 60 metric tons daily. 

Visiting mangrove areas, the students were amazed at the sea cucumber farms and the seaweeds laboratories and broodstock facilities in Cariaz Island being maintained by the BFAR Regional Office 1, as well as the traditional salt farms, all in Alaminos City. 

 The group also toured the Feedmix hatchery in Infanta town, various bagoong (fish paste/sauce) factories in Lingayen.

They dived into the giant clam reserve and nursery in Bolinao town. 

“So the students have a very, very broad experience here in Pangasinan that is absolutely not possible in the United States. The number of species under culture here far exceeds what we have in the US, not only in the number of species but also in the volume of species,“ Rice said.

It was the fourth time Rice brought his students with him to the country to make them learn from Pangasinan’s experience, the Philippines being one of the leading countries in terms of aquaculture, production and research. 

“As usual the Filipino hospitality has been superb…,” he said.

Rice is a Fulbright distinguished senior specialist fellow of the country who served in the US Peace Corps in the Philippines from 1981-1985 and worked with the BFAR.