Tubigon gets tough on illegal fishers
The Tubigon local government’s no-nonsense fight against illegal fishing is beginning to pay off.

By Reigh P. Monreal, DENR-CRMP

hen asked about his opinion about how the country can be rid of illegal fishing activities, Tubigon Mayor Paul Lasco always says in jest, “Convicted illegal fishers should be executed!”

A hard line indeed, but it clearly illustrates the political will that the Tubigon local government unit (LGU) has shown in the enforcement of coastal and fishery laws.   

Legislation vs. law enforcement

Lasco, a former municipal planning and development coordinator and later vice mayor, shows his disappointment over the fact that national laws deal only light penalties on violators of fishery laws. “This puts us at a disadvantage,” he says. The LGU’s strict implementation of national fishery laws, his explains, has unjustly placed its officials in a bad light.

Understandably, most fishers, especially those using destructive and illegal means of fishing, do not fully understand the difference between legislation and law enforcement. “Often, we find it difficult to convince them that we are only implementing national laws that prohibit the use of illegal methods,” the mayor says.

In the Philippines, the Local Government Code authorizes the municipal LGU, through due process and court proceedings, to impose a fine of 2,500 pesos on persons caught using destructive and illegal fishing methods or intruding into declared fish sanctuaries.

Local CRM plan

Having adopted a coastal resource management (CRM) plan, Tubigon has stepped up its efforts to transform its fishing community into a well-informed and law-abiding group.    

 “Tubigon’s coastal law enforcement program preceded the plan,” Lasco is quick to point out. The present Bantay Dagat had its beginnings in 1992 when the LGU launched a sea-borne patrol program in response to a Silliman University report, which revealed that the coastal and marine resources of Tubigon had been degraded by rampant illegal fishing.

“We used this report as a basis in the formulation of our coastal law enforcement strategy,” says the mayor. Then Mayor Eufracio Mascariñas, Lasco’s predecessor and now a member of the Provincial Board and chair of the Provincial Board’s sub-committee on coastal resources, organized a sea-borne patrol team, the forerunner of Tubigon’s Bantay Dagat.

Enforcing the law 

Today, the Bantay Dagat is composed of five deputy fish wardens and two personnel of the local Philippine National Police (PNP).

One of the fish wardens, Roberto Mejares, a resident of Batasan, has a long and eventful history in law enforcement. Batasan is notorious for being the cradle of Tubigon’s dynamite and cyanide fishers.

As early as the 1980s, Batasan fishers were already experiencing hard times due to decreasing fish catch brought about by illegal fishing activities that were being practiced blatantly around the island. The island has about 1,000 inhabitants, and many of them relied on the sea for a living, often with the use of dynamite, chemical poisoning, and libaliba (seine net with scaring device), which destroyed important fish habitats around the island.

Mejares has since been released. He now works with the Municipal Agriculture Office and has resumed his coastal law enforcement activities, this time with considerably more cooperation from the other members of the Tubigon fishing community.

Volunteer law enforcers

Some residents of coastal and island barangays have even volunteered to serve as fish wardens. Deputized by the local government, they have participated in capability-building activities conducted in collaboration with the United States for International Development (USAID)-funded Coastal Resource Management Project of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Haribon Foundation, International Marinelife Alliance (IMA), and Feed the Children, a foreign-funded non-governmental organization, which has an office in Tubigon.

The Bantay Dagat has already made a number of apprehensions and confiscated illegally caught fish and various illegal fishing paraphernalia. Fish caught by dynamite and other chemicals are presented to a PNP examiner while the explosives are brought to the PNP crime laboratory. The confiscated nets, some used by fishermen from the neighboring municipalities of Inabanga and Clarin where trawl fishing is also strictly disallowed, were kept for other purposes, for example, for distribution to communities that need them as fence materials for native fowl and ornamental plants.

Owners or operators of fishing boats, along with the actual offenders, are now included in the prosecution process. This development has discouraged boat owners and fishing operators from lending their boats or financing any illegal fishing operation. Often, however, the offenders and the LGU arrive at an amicable settlement, with the former paying the prescribed fine, which goes to the general fund of the LGU.

“We have a separate budget for CRM projects,” says Lasco. “We are looking at imposing fees or charges on operators of passenger and cargo ships docking at the Tubigon wharf.”

The LGU is guided by the principle that these vessels use the municipal waters in their business, and so must pay certain local charges.

“We will also impose sanctions on vessels disposing garbage into the municipal waters,” he says.   

Logistics and incentives

It would be difficult for the Bantay Dagat to intensify its campaign against illegal fishing without help from NGOs such as the Feed the Children.

With counterpart funding from the municipality and concerned barangays, Feed the Children donated to the LGU three sea-borne patrol boats worth 85,000 pesos. Under a memorandum of agreement between Feed the Children, the municipal LGU and the barangays, the boats, which are manned by the fish wardens, will be maintained by the barangays.

In Panaytayon, Pandan and Matabao, the fish wardens get at least 100 pesos each for every outing that results in apprehension. This amount is taken from the fine paid by the arrested violators. Similar arrangements are observed in the other coastal and island barangays.

The fish wardens sometimes complain that their patrol activities take them away from fishing, which is their main source of livelihood, admits Lasco. “But we always ask them, who else will guard your seas?”  

 Hard-to-learn lessons

During bad weather, some local residents are tempted to fish using illegal means, thinking that no patrol would be conducted. In one instance, illegal fishers surreptitiously poured sand into the patrol boat’s engine to keep it from running.

Although most fishers are already environmentally conscious, some still employ destructive methods. “We have minimized illegal activities to a considerable extent, most especially trawl fishing. Our Bantay Dagat has confiscated many fine mesh nets,” claims Lasco. “But somehow the netsfind their way back to their owners through dummies who buy the nets purportedly for non-fishing activities.”  

Once, Lasco relates, a fisher was put in jail for illegal fishing, and his family joined him there; the police had no choice but to let the fisher go. “We did not have unlimited personal resources to feed his family while he was in jail.”

In other instances, violators would simply evade arrest by fishing within Tubigon’s municipal waters then speeding out when law enforcers pursue them. Then, “we would not have jurisdiction over them, because we have yet to come up with an agreement with the other municipalities on an inter-municipality enforcement of coastal laws,” explains Lasco.

In yet another occasion, some fishermen requested the LGU to allow them to fish in a specific area using illegal methods. Their request was denied outright.

Notwithstanding such “difficult cases”, the LGU has succeeded in convincing many illegal fishers to shift to legal and non-destructive fishing methods, simply by strictly enforcing the law. Several violators have been convicted or required to pay the corresponding fines, and there are five cases of fishery law violation still pending in court. In addition, two barangay officials have been made respondents in a pending case of obstruction of justice for trying to prevent the arrest of some fishery law violators.

“I always tell these influence seekers:  Don’t tell me to go easy on illegal fishers,” says Lasco.

Cat-and-mouse game

Lasco is aware that the LGU’s strict enforcement of the law will have an effect on his political aspirations, but he insists, “I am not a bit bothered because those who engage in illegal fishing comprise a small minority of the total fishing population of Tubigon. It is these small number of fishermen that are playing a cat-and-mouse game with our coastal law enforcers.”By consistently and strictly enforcing the law, Tubigon’s Bantay Dagat is assured that, in this game at least, the good guys will always have the upper hand.

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