TIGBAUAN, Iloilo — Thanks to research, the milkfish or bangus industry has grown significantly and is now a dollar earner for the country.

According to the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), milkfish production in the Philippines reached P350,000 metric tons in 2007. Although the exported volume was only one percent of production, this brought in P354 million for the country. Exported milkfish went to the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Korea and Hong Kong.

The 2007 milkfish production in the country was more than double that of ten years earlier as the industry grew at 7 percent a year. This growth is attributed by industry watchers to a number of factors. First is the shift back to milkfish farming by tiger shrimp farmers. Second is the adoption and proliferation of sea cages. And the third is the development of new aquaculture technologies, in particular, the availability of hatchery-reared fry and the availability of formulated feeds.

In technology development, the Iloilo-based research center SEAFDEC or the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center pioneered the artificial propagation of milkfish as far back as 1976, and collaborated with BFAR in extending hatchery technology in the country. SEAFDEC has also studied the basic biology and physiology of milkfish. These studies have been the prelude to establishing nutrient or feed requirements, stocking densities in sea cages, maintaining fish health, even in engineering the design of milkfish egg collectors, among others.

SEAFDEC is a treaty organization that serves 11 member countries (ASEAN + Japan), and the Philippines, the host country of SEAFDEC Aquaculture Department (AQD), is usually the first testing ground of its technologies and the Filipinos are the first to benefit. Only three countries are farming milkfish – the Philippines, Taiwan and Indonesia. However, Malaysia and Thailand are expressing their interest.

Milkfish hatchery technology did not immediately take off. There were still a lot of fry caught in the wild in the ‘80s and the fish farmers themselves were distrustful of hatchery-reared fry because of deformities. This was “cured” by researchers by adding vitamin C to fish diet. Still, SEAFDEC, BFAR and other institutions like PCAMRD (the Philippine Council for Aquatic Marine Research and Development) and University of the Philippines Visayas persevered, knowing that wild catches of most commercially important fishes have been historically declining because of pollution and over-exploitation.

The experts firmly believe that aquaculture can bridge the demand-and-supply gap. Thus, by 1984, AQD began conducting its annual training course in marine fish hatchery, and also initiated an adopt-a-milkfish-broodstock scheme for the private sector. It built an integrated fish broodstock and hatchery demonstration complex in 1998 in Tigbauan, Iloilo to give trainees hands-on experience and to disperse fry to the private sector. It was also able to formulate an effective diet for milkfish larvae by 1995 and for broodstock by 1997.

“We are often asked what the impact of R&D is, especially research from SEAFDEC,” noted Dr. Joebert Toledo, chief of SEAFDEC/AQD. “Without research, there would be no milkfish hatchery, no seedstock, no feeds, and no ways of controlling the spread of fish diseases, no aquaculture.

The bottom line is to see the amount of milkfish that the country is producing. If this comes from aquaculture and not from municipal or commercial fisheries, then it comes mostly from research. And if it comes from research, then it comes mostly from SEAFDEC, too.”

According to the FAO, 99.24 percent of the milkfish produced in the Philippines in 2007 came from aquaculture. BFAR could not report milkfish catch from municipal or commercial fishing as this was negligible.

“If there are milkfish farms and milkfish hatcheries, there must be technical people manning these businesses. Technical training comes from research centers. I think SEAFDEC does it best because it developed the breeding and hatchery technology, and conducted the fish nutrient requirement and fish health studies,” Dr. Toledo said, noting that about 122 papers on milkfish were already published by SEAFDEC in peer-reviewed science journals, with the first paper appearing in 1976 and the latest in June 2010.

“The results described in these science papers are used in our training courses, in our farmer-friendly extension manuals, and in our demonstration and field verification projects,” he said. “This is why SEAFDEC can proudly say that its aquacultrue technologies are science-based.”

Most recently, four barangays in Nueva Valencia, Guimaras, that were affected by the 2006 oil spill took home their profits from a SEAFDEC-Petron/Citi Foundation project on milkfish sea cage culture project. Women in two barangays in Tigbauan, Iloilo were also trained on milkfish postharvest and marketing, an activity that was part of a SEAFDEC collaborative project with North Carolina State University and funded by the AQUAFISH Collaborative Research Support Program.