Hi MainlaB when I visit China special attention was given to the small and medium-sized lakes and reservoirs near cities where the local facilities for both fish production and recreation are especially needed.
There were five unusual aspects of the Chinese approached to lake and reservoir fisheries that merit some attention for their 5 pillar approach to lake management. These are:-
1. Stocking. In China, it is the fishermen who usually also produced the fish to be stocked adopting the catch and stock in rotation.
2. Fertilizing Direct feeding of fish and fertilization of water are considered an essential part of pond and reservoir management. It is often undertaken in lakes up to 100 or more hectares in size. Animal manures, especially pig, are used to stimulate plankton growth. The Chinese rule-of-thumb is to raise 15 or more pigs per hectare of water. Green grass and vegetables are fed to grass carp, which, in turn, produce animal fish manure and food for other fishes. The Chinese say: “Feed one grass carp well and you feed three other fishes.
3. Large-scale catching is almost the same version of fish trawling in the ocean accept this was done inside the reservoir using ingenious systems of partition,canal and dyke. The harvesting of fish is accomplished in more or less conventional ways using gill nets or pair trawling. Obviously the system is only practical where it is possible to market large catches all at once obviously in Philippine tilapia as provided a venue for stakeholders in the tilapia industry to work together might be a good choice.
4. Subdivision like China reservoir had been subdivided into area of where water plants like lotus are grown from the fishery areas and to partition recreational facilities from the main lake. Some enclosed portion of about was converted into fish ponds for intensive fish culture facilitate harvest.
5. Bottom lake dredging and clearing the bottom graded to an even contour to make fish harvesting as easy as possible. That cover only certain area to deepened the lake. All this for a few cents worth of observation in China management systems for lakes and reservoir.
Posted By ManilaB
President Noynoy Aquino has ushered in the era of straight talk in Philippine politics. This was evident in his inaugural address and in his first State-of-the-Nation Address. There were no euphemisms. No gobbledygook. We have a President who calls a spade a spade, especially if the spade appears to be one dirty, stinking shovel. Given the major howl it has created, it looks like "dirty stinking shovel" may just be the appropriate phrase to describe the controversial R18.7-billion project involving the dredging of Laguna Lake to be funded by a private Belgian commercial bank called Fortis Bank of Belgium.
The Office of the President, newly appointed Environment Secretary Ramon Paje and the Justice Department, among others, are now taking a close look at this project. By the way things are going, the deal could be the first multi-billion-peso scandal unearthed and put to light under the Noynoy Aquino presidency. No public consultation The Belgian-funded project could have been applauded were it not for the inherent defects and the alarming total absence of the mandatory public consultation. As a fishermen's group puts it, the project "was syndicated and checkered with first-rate secrecy." The group raised an important point: How could a multi-billion-peso project funded by a loan to be paid by taxpayers and which will directly affect the lives and livelihood of some six million Filipinos be hatched under a veil of darkness?
We agree that there had been "first-rate secrecy" because even the stakeholders from Rizal province were not consulted. Were the parties who cooked up the concept and the deal deliberately hiding something from public view? We don't know. But the view from Rizal is that the absence of public consultation constituted a flagrant disregard for long-established laws and procedures covering projects involving Laguna Lake. Worse, by excluding the direct stakeholders, the parties behind the project failed miserably to consider vital environmental factors.
And the failure to consider such factors is enough to make sure that the R18.7 billion that will be spent on the project is money down the drain - money which Filipino taxpayers will have to pay back to the Belgian lender. Dredging: Illogical move The biggest component of the project is the dredging of Laguna Lake. On the surface, this would look like a long-overdue move. Maybe the parties behind the project are capitalizing on the misleading notion that dredging the Lake is an urgent task. The fact is it is illogical to spend billions for the dredging of Laguna Lake without addressing the environmental disaster which is the massive denudation of forests in the provinces surrounding the lake. It has long been established that the lake is heavily silted because of the erosion and the resulting deposits coming from mountains of the nearby provinces. Add to this the household, agricultural, and industrial wastes indirectly dumped into the lake through its 21 tributaries. Ergo, the government can spend billions to dredge the lake and that could result in a temporary clean up.
But the next strong typhoon could bring the billions in borrowed money down the drain by causing a subsequent massive inflow of the by-products of erosion, human and industrial wastes, and other materials that would surely bring the lake back to its heavily silted state.
The logic is clear: Dredging the lake today is useless unless the environmental issues in the Laguna Lake region are addressed. And, it is alarming to note that there is nothing in that R18.7-billion project that has anything to do at all with addressing these environmental issues. The parties behind the project seem to be obsessed only with spending billions on dredging the lake, never mind that the move is purely palliative. Why DENR? If one thinks the obsession with dredging is baffling, the fact that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) is spearheading the project is even more puzzling. Anything and everything that pertains to the management and regulation of Laguna Lake has been placed under the jurisdiction of the Laguna Lake Development Authority (LLDA) since it was created in 1966 under Republic Act 4850 sponsored by then Rizal province Rep. Frisco San Juan. Surprisingly, the deal with the Belgian bank for the R18.7-billion funding was inked by the DENR during the watch of the previous DENR Secretary. Secretary Paje is now looking into the puzzling situation. Secretary Paje's predecessors said the loan is covered by a so-called executive agreement.
But in this country, even a sophomore law student would know that a Republic Act is superior to a mere executive agreement. But at the end of the day, the issue is not so much the weight of statutes but the propriety of the move by Secretary Paje's predecessors. What is more dumb-founding is why the DENR would not only exclude the LLDA from any decent discussion of this project, but would also take over a matter which under a five-decade-old law has already placed under the ambit of the LLDA. Congressional investigation At this point, several members of Congress have called for an investigation of this P18.7-billion deal.
This is a welcome development. A congressional probe would allow the direct stakeholders to be heard - a right that has been denied them during the time that the controversial billion-peso dredging project was being hatched. Already, the view is that the congressional probe will unmask the folly of the dredging project. It should bring to the fore the absence of logic in the planned dredging of the lake without first addressing the massive environmental problems hounding the entire Laguna Lake region, its tributaries, and the many communities of informal settlers in the lakeshore area. The congressional probe gives people hope that they would not have to end up paying for an P18.7-billion loan that faces the grim prospect of merely going down the drain.
