Regional Fisheries Training Center - showcasing polyculture

By NINFA B. QUIRANTE (PIA Samar)
August 27, 2007

CATBALOGAN CITY, Samar  –  The Regional Fisheries Training Center at the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) housed at the Samar State University (SSU) - College of Fisheries Campus in Barangay Mercedes, Catbalogan City maintains a polyculture pond teeming with bangus, tilapia and mudcrabs.

Norberto Berida, Center Director with Clutilde Amparado showed PIA the Brackish WaterAquaCulture Development Project inside the SSU Campus.

Polyculture, said the fishery experts could be equated with multi-cropping that is done in farm agriculture.

Crisscrossed by bamboo bridges, the farm shored up in a 3,000 square meter pond is home to some 2,500 pieces of mudcrabs (Scylla serrata), 5,000 bangus (Chanos chanos) and 3,000 tilapia (saline).

The bamboo bridges facilitate feeding and harvesting.

For fishponds to flourish, every care is done to ensure that they have some 94% survival rate as their case, said Berida. They last harvested in April 2007.

Based from the BFAR website, it talks of polyculture as a way to intensify fish culture without an input of expensive feed. In this way the natural food produced in the culture environment is utilized to a greater extent through compatible or complementary feeding habits of fish which do not compete with each other.

Yields obtained by polyculture are usually much higher than those obtained by monoculture, especially if the right species have been chosen, it further explained.

Mudcrabs

Mudcrabs, said these experts, have to move freely and establish their own homes so that a certain density has to be observed. Each crab should have some 1.5 meters to consider its home for ‘wars’ to be avoided. Like human beings, crabs too should have their ‘home sweet home’ with no intruders please.

A monthly sampling for weight check like human infants, have to be done. Not only weight, body length and even the average weight and length have to be recorded for analysis. As crablets, they weighed an average of 18 grams then, in the latest weighing sample done in July yet they have grown some 6,685 grams.

This is maybe the reason why fishpond owners do not like to follow the scientific way said Teddy (Clutilde). The maintenance is too tedious. There is a computation of area, feeds and monthly monitoring of growth such that most pond owners ignore – result- they close shop because they lose.

“BFAR always emphasize scientific method,” said Berida. BFAR insists they have the expertise and only waits for those who would tap them.

Bangus

As to the bangus, Berida said they have harvested most of them and have just retained a thousand waiting for a deboning training for the womenfolk in the area.

“The training center should not only serve as a demonstration farm; it should also have an impact on the community,” said Berida.

Deboning bangus could very well come handy to fish processors in this thriving fishery city in Samar.

While Samar boasts then of a very rich Maqueda Bay fishing area, studies show that the tonnage of fish caught has greatly diminished through the years.

Limelight then would be shifted to cultured fish like bangus.

With this, women who are jobless could be assisted. Consumers today are so busy they would rather purchase processed goods for convenience.

Deboned and marinated bangus could be very handy.

Tilapia

As for tilapia, as it does not possess many bones like bangus, it just completes the fish species in the pond.

As gleaned from the BFAR literature on polyculture, other benefits gained by polyculture is quite often the ecological conditions in a pond are improved. It has been found that Tilapia aurea in a polyculture system improves the oxygen balance by feeding on the detritus which would otherwise decompose and take up oxygen.

If one were interested in managing a fishpond through polyculture, Ronnie Berida and Teddy Amparado are just as accommodating. They just wish that interested parties follow the scientific method so that the expected end results will be achieved as what they gain from their BW Aquaculture Development Project at the SSU- Mercedes Campus down there in Catbalogan City.