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Fishes and other Water Denizens?that is the solicitude response you will often get as to
what the fishermen of Aurora mainly do. The condition of life inhabiting coastal estuaries
like Aurora’s bays, sound, and coves?places where rivers mix with sea?is rich out of
all proportions to the size of these minor and brackish indentations in this wide and long
shorelines of Aurora. Whether determined by weight or value, most of all commercial or
recreational fish caught in Aurora’s coastal areas are dependent at some phase of
life on estuaries. Not surprisingly, a close examination at all the evolved to reap such
places reveals the complexity and subtlety that moved the fishermen on their placid
environment.
The bottom, except in the bay’s extreme shallows, is forever unperceived; yet it is a
living entity to the fishermen, who may pay much attention on this invisible fishing
ground. I find it intriguing to think of the coastal areas of Aurora as a wonderful
mystery box into which you can dip any one of these fishing gadgets, and depending on what
you used to catch the sea species.
Even as we appreciate the richness of ways we fished the coastal areas of Aurora, we must
acknowledge ominous trends in the bounty on which it is based. In only the last quarter of
century, these are the facts: commercial catches of fishes have declined from traditional
levels eighty percent of it. The list continues: barracuda (pangaluan), grouper
(lapu-lapu), red snapper (dapak), spanish mackerel (tangigi), skipjack (talukituk), tuna
(bangkulis), other species of fishes, and varieties of shellfishes, even the corals.
The reasons cover the map; dynamite, pollution, loss of habitat, disease, excessive
fishing, and non-existence of commercial management by government agencies and
legislatures. If there is one, it was never enforced. Those would soft-pedal the
situation. Note correctly that almost all species are down.
It is a deep and touching faith, born both of experience and a lack of other options in
life. But the science and the statistics argued differently. I observed during my visit
last March in Aurora, the coastal areas had entered a new era. The declines are too
widespread and too long lasting and most likely to be extinct and forever gone. Natural
ups are lower, the down deeper. The living coastal areas itself has begun to unravel. The
lush meadows of underwater corals and grasses that once spread across have died back, with
no bay wide comeback, yet apparent. Both the shellfishes and grasses performed important
water-quality functions that only now are being appreciated fully. Together they were able
to filter vast quantities of pollutants. The shellfishes alone that lay in the coastal
bottom have filtered volume of water equal the whole of Baler Bay.
Even coastal species of fishes that appear to remain healthy are under severe pressure as
Aurora’s fishermen lose more options and are forced to focus even more intensely on
what survives.
And although statistics to document it are scarce, the growth in pressure from fishermen
may well have been exceeded.
Can we rein ourselves in on the catches of what remains healthy? Can we bring back all
that is not? Some signs point hopeless. The way however, is clear, and the journey well
begun. And there is living proof that the coastal areas still has some capacity to cure
itself if left alone for a period of time.
The potential is there for a new era of responsibility in harvesting Aurora’s coastal
areas, but the fact is that to date, nobody has ever moved to manage any species of
sustainable basis before it crashed to historic depth. The risks of failure go beyond
economics and our eating pleasure. Many fishermen around Aurora would laugh to hear
themselves called “provider,” but if provider can be characterized as
crystallizing feelings shared deeply by Aurorans, that these seafood cultures, by their
living close to a nature the rest of us have largely divorced, by their artistry in
fishing the coastal areas through their meshes and their lives, are indeed imparting
something vital to the quality of life on in towns of Aurora.
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