DAGUPAN CITY (PNA) - Just like the many cemeteries in the Philippines today, the first and only known fish cemetery in the country and perhaps the world over, located in Barangay Bonuan Binloc here, is now being spruced up in time for All Soul's Day. At least five workers were mobilized by Paulino Carr, chief of the maintenance section of the National Integrated Fisheries Research and Development Center
(NIFRDC) in Barangay Bonuan Binloc here to prepare the fish cemetery in anticipation of the flood of visitors seeing the tombs of the dead fish this All Souls' Day. The cemetery, located on a 400-square meter lot inside the 24-hectare NIFRDC, is the only known place in the country where various endangered sea mammals which have died lie buried. The place, which could easily qualify for a space in "Ripley's Believe It Or Not," has been in existence since early 1999 and after 11 years, it became the final resting place of 17 different sea mammals, most of them dolphins and whales of different rare species. Believed to be the only one of its kind in the entire world, the fish cemetery is now being visited by conservationists and students, both local and foreign, not only on All Souls' Day but all-year round. Just a stone's throw away from the Asia Fisheries Academy inside the NIFTDC and a few meters south of the RP-Korean Dagupan Fish Processing Complex, the fish cemetery tends to look weird being mixed up in a research facility. But the truth is, it is complimentary to the government-run structure which is doing the work similar to that of the Southeast Asia Fisheries Development Center in Iloilo.
Now provided with a newly-built covered hall at its right entrance that serves as its information cubicle, the cemetery is now actually one of the best known landmarks inside the NFITDC which had been serving as the fish research facility of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) since 1992. Made famous the world over because of the Internet, the fish cemetery is one reason more local and foreign tourists come to Dagupan. Another reason, of course, is for them to have a bite of local delicacies, bangus, crabs, malaga (siganid) and shrimps freshly caught from fishponds and pens that are prepared in mouth-watering culinary delights. The fish cemetery was conceived by Dr. Westly Rosario, chief of the NIFTDC, with the approval of BFAR National Director Malcolm Sarmiento, to become a show window in fish conservation. It was made by BFAR as an instrument to drumbeat its advocacy for the conservation and care of sea mammals that once teemed in the Philippines seas but sadly are now going extinct due to man's unsustainable fishing activities First to be entombed in the fish cemetery was a 1.2-ton and 320 centimeter-long whale that was named "Moby Dick" and seized by the BFAR from fishermen in Malabon, Metro Manila in February, 1999. In the absence of a facility to keep the huge dead animal in Manila, BFAR decided to bring the cadaver to NIFTDC in Dagupan for disposal. The area where "Moby Dick" was buried later became a common grave for other large endangered marine species. Sixteen other sea mammals, from whales to dolphins of different species, were entombed there later, the last of which was a six-foot long spinner dolphin (Stenella longistoris) weighing 60 kilos that died in the waters of Buenlag, Binmaley, Pangasinan on April 3, 2010. Dr. Rosario said the fish cemetery seeks among others, to deliver the message to the people on the strong need to spare the lives of endangered sea mammals for which the Philippine Fisheries Code or Republic Act No. 8550 has extended its protection.
The act prohibits the fishing or taking and trade of rare, threatened and endangered species listed in the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species (CITES) of Wild Fauna and Flora. Dismayed by the fact that some fishermen catching these creature often butcher these for food or to make lubricants out of their fat so that they can turn these into candles, Rosario said that under the law, poachers of sea mammals could be apprehended and charged and their specimens or catch confiscated. At the same time, he lamented that while live specimens of the mammals are released back to their natural environment in the sea, there is simply no place to dispose of the dead fish. This, he said, was the reason they put up the first cemetery for fish as the fish, like humans, are also due for some respect even if they are already dead.
