If you have been to Davao City you may have wondered why there is an unusual presence of sea gypsies (Badjao) begging on the streets and peddling pearl jewelry in resorts and tourist spots. This marginalized minority have not been landlubbers until the last few decades for reasons not quite evident to Noah. He was not clueless for long, because one day a Badjao friend took him out fishing.
the boat was a 16-foot motorized banca and there were 3 Badjao guys led by Lando who lived in a village at the mouth of the Davao river. The method of fishing for this trip is called Plang-ree, which consists of one long nylon rope (not the usual type for fishing) and short smaller ropes tied to it at 1.5 meter intervals with each line holding a #15 fish hook for a total of 248 hooks in Lando's plang-ree.
The bait of choice is a fish called tamban (herring/sardines)and about 10 - 15 kgs of this is needed for one fishing trip. Tamban is caught in a different manner (net) and by other fishermen, hence Lando has to buy his bait a day before going out fishing to be sure that he has bait, because this type of fish isn't caught daily. The cost of the bait + the cost of gasoline for the 16 HP inboard motor could easily top 600 Pesos for one fishing trip.
The fishing lines are dropped in an area that is known to be rocky and is about 30 - 40 meters deep. The Grouper species is the type of fish caught by this method and they are supposed to be large and abundant at this depth. An anchor is tied to each end of the plane-ree and a rope goes up to a buoy for each anchor. The fishermen then motor to a shallower spot where they can do spear fishing or just simply wait out on the boat if the current and wind is too strong for diving.
After about an hour and a half of waiting the line is pulled up and any fish caught is placed in an icebox and the hooks rebaited and dropped overboard in another area. This would be done 3 times if the fishermen leave early enough, but in this particular trip it was done only twice and in spite of that they were out in the sea for 8 hours.
One thing that was evident for that day was that most of the bait came up untouched. Some had nibble marks or were half-eaten and some were gone, but most of the bait looked as good as when they were thrown into the sea. The photo above will show the bait on the trough beside the boat, and Lando said that they would cook that for dinner. When your bait is untouched it means that no fish or very little fish is found in this area of the seabed.
Before the sun disappeared over the mt. Apo mountain range the fishermen headed home with the day's catch in a plastic bag. It consisted of 1 large grouper, 2 smaller groupers of the same color and a meter-long extra big trumpet fish - the only product of a tedious, back-breaking job out in the heat of the sun. How much would that be in terms of income? About 1,500 pesos minus 600 pesos for the bait and gasoline and that would leave 300 pesos (6 US$) each. In this particular trip about one third of the line and hooks was left in the bottom of the sea because it got entangled in some rocks presumably when the fish struggled to free itself. To replace that would cost an amount of money and labor.
Lando said that there are days when they came home empty-handed and some days when they had about 4,000 pesos worth of fish, which was not frequent in the recent years. All told, the saddening truth remains: the fish in our waters is dwindling due to overfishing and the use of indiscriminate fishing methods by big fishing companies. Who are the first to suffer? Sadly, the Badjao and other fishing tribes are the hardest hit and this would account for their shift in money-making activities.
To give a lighter mood to this story here are photos of the fish that they caught for the day:
the boat was a 16-foot motorized banca and there were 3 Badjao guys led by Lando who lived in a village at the mouth of the Davao river. The method of fishing for this trip is called Plang-ree, which consists of one long nylon rope (not the usual type for fishing) and short smaller ropes tied to it at 1.5 meter intervals with each line holding a #15 fish hook for a total of 248 hooks in Lando's plang-ree.
The bait of choice is a fish called tamban (herring/sardines)and about 10 - 15 kgs of this is needed for one fishing trip. Tamban is caught in a different manner (net) and by other fishermen, hence Lando has to buy his bait a day before going out fishing to be sure that he has bait, because this type of fish isn't caught daily. The cost of the bait + the cost of gasoline for the 16 HP inboard motor could easily top 600 Pesos for one fishing trip.
The fishing lines are dropped in an area that is known to be rocky and is about 30 - 40 meters deep. The Grouper species is the type of fish caught by this method and they are supposed to be large and abundant at this depth. An anchor is tied to each end of the plane-ree and a rope goes up to a buoy for each anchor. The fishermen then motor to a shallower spot where they can do spear fishing or just simply wait out on the boat if the current and wind is too strong for diving.
After about an hour and a half of waiting the line is pulled up and any fish caught is placed in an icebox and the hooks rebaited and dropped overboard in another area. This would be done 3 times if the fishermen leave early enough, but in this particular trip it was done only twice and in spite of that they were out in the sea for 8 hours.
One thing that was evident for that day was that most of the bait came up untouched. Some had nibble marks or were half-eaten and some were gone, but most of the bait looked as good as when they were thrown into the sea. The photo above will show the bait on the trough beside the boat, and Lando said that they would cook that for dinner. When your bait is untouched it means that no fish or very little fish is found in this area of the seabed.
Before the sun disappeared over the mt. Apo mountain range the fishermen headed home with the day's catch in a plastic bag. It consisted of 1 large grouper, 2 smaller groupers of the same color and a meter-long extra big trumpet fish - the only product of a tedious, back-breaking job out in the heat of the sun. How much would that be in terms of income? About 1,500 pesos minus 600 pesos for the bait and gasoline and that would leave 300 pesos (6 US$) each. In this particular trip about one third of the line and hooks was left in the bottom of the sea because it got entangled in some rocks presumably when the fish struggled to free itself. To replace that would cost an amount of money and labor.
Lando said that there are days when they came home empty-handed and some days when they had about 4,000 pesos worth of fish, which was not frequent in the recent years. All told, the saddening truth remains: the fish in our waters is dwindling due to overfishing and the use of indiscriminate fishing methods by big fishing companies. Who are the first to suffer? Sadly, the Badjao and other fishing tribes are the hardest hit and this would account for their shift in money-making activities.
To give a lighter mood to this story here are photos of the fish that they caught for the day:
a butcher's knife will show the
proportionate size of the fish...
...which could easily be about
half of Noah's torso.
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