On the Books

[My counterpart Cres helps a fisherman register with the province]

6.4.10

I recently went to the big island (Homonhon) again for two days with the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources to register fisherfolk for National Fisherfolk Registration Day. The Regional Director of BFAR was part of the group, as well as staff from the regional and local offices. This was the first time I’ve flown solo on a work trip in our nine months here, but it was a good opportunity to get to know my counterparts better and practice my Waray-Waray.

Fisherfolk registration is important here and is one of the objectives for our Peace Corps workplan. Essentially, the fishermen fill out a basic application which includes family, fishing, and alternative livelihood statistics, and the forms go to the provincial BFAR to make it official.


By registering, the fishermen are eligible to receive fisheries assistance (loan programs, equipment, and training). Also, only local fishers are allowed in the municipal waters, so each registered fisherman should be issued a photo ID (although this rarely happens in practice). These IDs are a big deal for the fisherfolk, considering most of them don’t have any other form of identification. So one of our upcoming projects is taking photos for all the fishermen and helping them get their IDs printed.

[Suluan]

We first visited Suluan, another island that’s part of our community but is a three-hour pumpboat trip from the mainland, to register fisherfolk. The trip is too dangerous to make during rainy season, but during summer was nice and calm. This was the first time I’d visited the island, which is rumored to be “better than Boracay” (the top tourist destination in the Philippines). Now, I haven’t been to Boracay yet, but Suluan was beautiful. The island is covered in lush green and powdery fine white sand. It is definitely worth a longer visit and we plan to go back for a camping trip in July. While there, we distributed registration surveys to the barangay council and BFAR staff held a short program.

[fisherfolk village in Suluan]

After Suluan we went on to Homonhon for the bulk of the trip. We canvassed three villages the first evening to find fishermen and help them get registered. I thought we would be working in teams, but I was dropped off at the first village all alone! This turned out to be great though - the fishermen were nervous at first to work with me, but after I spoke Waray-Waray with them they felt much more comfortable. By the end of the night we had registered about 75 fishermen.

[late night registration]

We traveled to the other side of the island to visit more villages and registered an additional 75 on the second day. Because Homonhon is so remote, it has historically had very few registered fishermen, even though most people make their livelihood from the sea. So to register 150 folks in two days was a good accomplishment for our group.

[leaving Homonhon]