DAGUPAN CITY—GROWERS HERE HAVE been forced to harvest their bangus stocks after some of these floated on Monday due to extreme heat.
But city agriculturist Emma Molina said her office has not monitored any case of fish kill since last week in this city, famous for its bangus.
Angel Ballesteros, a fish pen operator in Barangay Bonuan Gueset, said he had to harvest every bangus in his pens because of the weather.
Ballesteros hauled two boatloads of newly harvested small bangus at the Magsaysay fish market here on Tuesday.
“We should be harvesting these in the third week of May,” he said. “But when they started dying yesterday (Monday) we had to get and sell them.”
Ballesteros said even stocks in adjoining fish pens in the Dawel River were beginning to float.
“At least, we still earn a little,” he said. Bangus sells at P90 a kilogram.
Molina said although the city is experiencing “extraordinarily hot” temperature, extremely strong sunlight and increased water temperature in rivers, these remained lower than 2007 records.
“We had 37 degrees Celsius then. At present, our highest temperature is only about 32.7 degrees Celsius, which was recorded in the first two weeks of April,” Molina said.
“Even the water salinity is still low, compared to what we had last year,” she said.
But she said the city’s rivers remained critical, especially those in the boundary of Binmaley town.
“Our situation today is that we have quite cold mornings and cloudy skies. It is during these times when bangus go to the surface to breathe because of low dissolved oxygen level,” she said.
Molina said fish farmers had been advised to move the water surface in their pens by paddling in a boat or by using a water pump.
“This will prevent their stocks from dying because they lack air to breathe,” she said.
This city produces an average of five metric tons of bangus every day from its 978-hectare fish ponds run by about 506 operators.
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