THE red tide scare is wreaking havoc on the livelihood of producers as well as traders and vendors of shellfish products in Pangasinan. Thousands of people dependent on the province’s shellfish industry are ruing the red tide scare which has badly affected sales of the product.

“We eat what we could not sell and nobody among us had ever been hospitalized,” said Gemma Quinto, 41, an oyster vendor of barangay Lucao, hoping to disprove there’s red tide toxin in Pangasinan waters.

Quinto said even if they kept on telling customers there is no red tide in the Lingayen Gulf, particularly in Bolinao where her oysters come from, still many people refuse to buy oysters, mussels, “kampis” and other shellfish products.

Bolinao is now one of the biggest suppliers of shellfish products for Metro Manila, now even beating Cavite in the production of mussels.

Quinto said she get her supply of oysters daily from a supplier who collects payments for the commodity the next day.

“How can we pay the suppliers if we are not selling well,” Quinto wailed.

She said motorists used to drop by and buy oysters from them but because of the red tide scare that started when members of a family from Laguna died of paralytic shellfish poisoning, few such buyers ever stop by now.

“Before, we were selling at the least P500 worth of oysters per day. Now, it is hard for us to even sell P200 worth, Quinto said in the Pangasinan dialect.

She asked responsible government agencies, like the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, for help because the public must be informed thoroughly that red tide is confined only in some southern parts of the Philippines.