What Palawan’s fishing ban asks of Iloilo’s leaders

Carles, Iloilo is on Oceana’s list of municipal-water hotspots. That detail tends to slip past Ilonggo readers, because the bigger headline is Palawan: 1,331 commercial fishing incursions inside its 15-kilometer line in March alone, out of 3,853 nationwide — a five-year high.

That count is what pushed Gov. Amy Roa Alvarez to sign Provincial Ordinance No. 3761 on March 26 — the country’s first provincewide ban on commercial fishing in municipal waters, with fines from PHP 200,000 to PHP 1 million and up to six years in prison. Then she said the part that should unsettle us: the lantsa harassing her island municipalities are not all coming from Manila or Batangas. Some sail from Iloilo.

We do not get to look away from that.

Iloilo’s own provincial coastal specialists have warned that municipal water health here could fall from a fair 75 percent to 25 percent if commercial encroachment continues. That estimate assumes enforcement keeps up. It is not keeping up.

Part of the reason is a court file most readers will never open. In G.R. No. 270929, the Supreme Court’s First Division did not rule that commercial trawlers belong inside municipal waters. It ruled, on August 19, 2024, that BFAR filed its appeal of a Malabon trial court decision too late. A procedural lapse — not a constitutional finding — is what allows commercial vessels to fish in waters at least seven fathoms deep, well inside the 15-kilometer line.

BFAR’s motion for reconsideration sits. Meanwhile, the agency has installed transponders on more than 90 percent of registered commercial vessels and refuses to share the data with the Coast Guard, the PNP-Maritime Group, or any local government — including the one that just passed the binding ordinance and could use it. Oceana’s Von Hernandez calls this a question of political will. He is being polite.

While that data sits in a Quezon City server, fishers in Tayabas Bay and the Tañon Strait are docking their boats. Diesel has roughly doubled — daily fuel costs have jumped from PHP 200 to PHP 300 up to PHP 600 to PHP 700, says Cebu fisherfolk leader Venerando Carbon — while the PHP 3,000 government subsidy reaches only some of the 353,000 fisherfolk families now below the poverty line. The fisherfolk database, by Davao Oriental leader Judith Castres’ account, is too outdated to find them.

Capture fisheries production has fallen from 2.6 million metric tons in 2010 to roughly 1.9 million in 2023. Eighty-eight percent of assessed stocks are overfished. The Fisheries Code that was supposed to prevent all this turns 28 next year.

Palawan did the difficult thing. It passed a law that names the problem and accepts that, as Gov. Alvarez herself put it, behind these vessels are workers who are also trying to earn a living. That tension is real and deserves a serious answer about transitions and crew protections, not a slogan. But it cannot be the reason another province does nothing.

Iloilo’s Sangguniang Panlalawigan should be drafting its version now. Not after the Supreme Court rules on the motion for reconsideration. Not after BFAR finally shares the data. Now — because the boats from our coastlines that Palawan complained about are the same boats whose absence our small fishers are quietly counting. The law already gives the tools. Courage is the part the law cannot supply.