By DANNY O. SAGUN

WHEN will our fish farmers learn their lessons? Not even a massive fishkill, it seems, can stop them from appropriating the rivers and the seas for their fish pens and cages. They might have suffered big losses now with tons and tons of fishes floating dead in the water, the stench from all the decaying and dead fish so assailing tothe nostrils of Anda folk and visitors, according to Mayor Nestor Pulido.

But do you think those people would pack their bags and leave, so to speak?

Those farmers are not ordinary as we may think. They are actually millionaire-businessmen and influential people who can afford to spend or invest millions of pesos in such business as fishpen operation. How can a lowly barangay resident spend for fishpen paraphernalia that cost thousands of pesos, still excluding the fries or fingerlings, unless he risks borrowing money and suffering huge losses when his produce encounters say, a fishkill or poor market price?

We were told that an operator of a 10 meter by 10 meter cage in deep waters (as in the bay separating the mainland from Anda) earns much, much more than one who operates a one-hectare fishpond.
That huge profit margin thus drives many who got money and fortune to try investing in the waters off Alaminos, Bolinao and many other coastal towns. They are raking money year in year out.

But their selfish motives catch up with them as they suffer losses in the millions too when Nature, already overburdened by greed and wanton disregard of natural laws by unscrupulous individuals, unleashes her fury. In no time flashfloods come tearing down all those nets and bamboo poles. Rush of polluted waters from sudden, heavy downpour after the very hot summer suffocates the fish in those overcrowded pens and to everyone’s dismay the fishes float already dead.

Pulido told a radio interview that strong currents brought all the dead stinking fishes to his town prompting residents there to buy surgical masks from pharmacies. But the supply was not enough.

Besides wearing a mask is not a guarantee the wearer can no longer smell the stench.

Operators from Bolinao opened their cages and just let the dead fishes go with the currents. Poor Pulido and the people of Anda, they have to bear the consequence. The mayor might have been exaggerating when he made that report, yet it was really alarming. That town is just a short distance from the famous Hundred Islands. No tourist or visitor would dare bear that pungent odor throughout his stay there. And that visitor may exaggerate reports too as he comes home.

All those efforts to market the place here and abroad would just come to naught.

The culprit? The greed and selfishness of those who don’t care about anybody or anything but their pockets alone.