The line we defend

By Herman M. Lagon

Some campaigns fade once the hashtags cool down. “Atin ang Kinse” refuses to. It keeps resurfacing because the issue is not symbolic; it is daily rice, tuition, and ulam. In many coastal towns, the 15-kilometer municipal water line is where the morning begins: a father warming a small engine that coughs before it cooperates, a mother patching a net with the calm speed of habit, a child half-awake on a banca bench because there is no one to leave them with. Then a legal decision lands, and suddenly that familiar nearshore becomes negotiable. The Supreme Court’s First Division decision — linked to a petition involving Mercidar Fishing Corporation — effectively opened municipal waters to commercial fishing by default after a missed procedural step, and the fight moved from the sea to the courtroom, and back again. The tension is not academic. It is the voice of the small boat, plain and direct: what becomes of us when steel-hulled vessels arrive in waters where paddles once felt sufficient?

The law then took a turn that felt both technical and painfully human. The Office of the Solicitor General filed late, the petition was dismissed for being beyond the appeal period, and what should have been a full discussion about livelihoods and ecosystems became a case about deadlines. The ones left to “adjust” were the people with the smallest engines. Yet the reaction has been loud precisely because fisherfolk live with “technicalities” that never feel technical: weather windows, fuel prices, dwindling catch, and the quiet math of whether to sail out or stay home. Government agencies have not simply shrugged. The Department of Agriculture and BFAR filed a motion for reconsideration in January 2025, arguing that opening municipal waters threatens small fisherfolk and marine resources. That is why “Atin ang Kinse” continues: it is a public insistence that rules about the sea should not be decided as if the sea were a courtroom hallway.

On the ground, the argument becomes painfully visual. You do not need a policy brief to see what “competition” means when one boat has sonar and a wide net, and the other has a patched lambat and a small engine that sometimes dies mid-trip. That imbalance is why municipal waters were protected in the first place, and why many communities describe the kinse as their last workable zone: near enough to return safely, shallow enough to avoid the worst risks, and familiar enough to fish without expensive technology. The campaign is not saying commercial fishing has no place anywhere. It is saying the nearshore is not the place to settle the industry’s hunger. Even the November 2025 Inquirer editorial captured the core fear: the petition sought to strike provisions that limited municipal water use to small fisherfolk and recognized LGU jurisdiction — exactly the guardrails that kept “preferential rights” from becoming a nice phrase with no teeth. When people chant “Atin ang Kinse,” they are not defending a number. They are defending the only scale of fishing that still allows a poor family to survive without gambling their lives in deeper waters.

Science, too, keeps intruding into the debate, as it should. Oceana’s reporting has pointed to widespread encroachment into municipal waters and cited satellite monitoring that detected over 270,000 “night lights” inside the 15-kilometer zone from 2017 to 2024 — signals consistent with commercial fishing activity at night. That number is not just alarming; it explains the exhaustion in many coastal conversations. People have been complaining about intrusion for years, often without cameras, without lawyers, and without the energy to keep filing reports that go nowhere. “Atin ang Kinse” gained a sharper edge after the ruling because it felt like a formal blessing on what many fisherfolk already suspected was happening informally. If enforcement was already hard when the law was clear, what happens when the boundary becomes disputed?

Policy response has moved beyond protest into lawmaking. The “Atin ang Kinse Kilometro” bill — House Bill No. 5606 — was filed in October 2025 to restore and strengthen the exclusive rights of small fisherfolk over municipal waters, according to the same Inquirer piece, which notes it was crafted with fisherfolk groups and framed as a response to the court ruling. The source goes further by explaining the penalties and the bill’s constitutional basis for protecting subsistence fishers. That point is practical: people are not only seeking compassion; they want legal tools that reflect life on the water. Yet the campaign keeps a careful tone. It does not suggest that a single measure can erase overfishing, poverty, and enforcement problems. It simply draws a clear line — literally — and says this space is for the smallest players because food security and fairness require it.

The uncomfortable part, the part many readers might not enjoy, is that “Atin ang Kinse” forces a question about whose inconvenience counts. Commercial fishing interests argue supply, efficiency, and scale. Coastal families argue survival, safety, and the basic right not to be displaced from the only waters they can realistically fish. Government agencies argue a mix of conservation, livelihood protection, and rule-of-law consistency. The campaign’s sharper critique is not “commercial fishers are evil.” It is that the country keeps treating the poor as adjustable: adjust your fishing grounds, adjust your income, adjust your children’s plans, adjust your appetite. The wiser ethic — one that does not need to sound religious to be moral — is to look first at who will be harmed most, and to choose policies that protect them before asking them to sacrifice again.

“Atin ang Kinse” continues because it is not really about fish alone. It is about whether our institutions can still protect a commons without being distracted by procedure, profit, or fatigue. The sea does not read court resolutions, but fisherfolk do, and they read them beside nets, fuel containers, and unpaid bills. The campaign’s simplest truth is also its punch: if the nearshore is opened to those who can take the most, then the smallest boats will not just lose catch; they will lose their place in the water, and eventually, their place in the country’s food story. That is why the kinse line has become a line of dignity. Defend it, and we defend a form of livelihood that still feeds communities without flattening them. Ignore it, and we will keep wondering — at higher prices and emptier seas — how we managed to trade a nation’s daily fish for a technicality.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a “student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.