1'6

A BRIEF HISTORICAL RBVln OF LIVING IlARINE RESOURCESRESEARCH IN THE PHILIPPINEsW'

by

Daniel Paulybl

Pauly, D. 1986. A brief historical review of living marine resourcesresearch in the Philippines. pp. 3-18. In: D. Pauly, J.Saeger and G. Silvestre (eds.). Resources, Management andSocio-Economics of Philippine Marine Fisheries. Dept. Mar.Fish. Tech. Rep. 10, 217 p.

ABSTRACT

A review, startin g with Spanish colonial times, is presentedof research on the living marine resources of the Philippines. Thefirst efforts were mainly taxonomic, with a gradual transition to thedescription of gears and fisheries. Biological studies wereconducted mainly since Independence. Since the seventies, increasingsigns of resource depletion and destruction (especially in the caseof coral reefs) have led to an increased awareness of the need for

quantitative studies and for resources management.

al ICLARM Contribution No. 320

bl International Center for Living Aquatic Resources ManagementMGC P.O. Box 1501, l\1akati, Metro Manila, Philippines.

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INTRODUCTION

This contribution was written to fulfill three separate tasks:

(i) to provide, as its title implies, a historical review of

the study of marine living resources in the Philippines

fran colonial tUnes to the present,

(ii) to provide access to the literature on those marine

resources not covered by the other contributions included

in this volume, and finally,

(iii) to provide a conceptual framework for these other

co~tributions, each of which covers separate aspects of

what actually should be viewed as a coherent whole.

The various section of this contribution are arranged

chronologically under headings characterizing the four periods that

were identified.

THB SPANISH PBRIOD: NOT MUCH SCIENCB

Although pre-Spanish lore and folklore contains a multitude of

references to the closeness of the early Filipinos to the seas sur-

rounding them, and to fish and fishing (see e.g. Ochotorena, 1981),

it is only with the onset of the Spanish colonialperiod that written

materials became available which document this relationship. How-

ever, this documentation remained anecdotal (see entries to "fish and

fisheries" in the Index, p. 400-401, of Blair and Robertson, 1973)

and at no time during the Spanish colonial period were works produced

which even remotely matched those written, under circumstances

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otherwise similar to those in the Philippines, by say, Hamilton-

Buchanan (1822) or Day (1875-1878) in the Indian subcontinent, or by

P. Bleeker (see Lamme, 1973) in what is now Indonesia.

In fact, most of the scientific contributions on Phij.ippine

marine resources were at that time written by European scholars of

non-Spanish origin. Thus, for example, among the 44 references in

Jordan and Richardson (1910), who published the first comprehensive

check-list of Philippine fishes, only three were in Spanish; in the

case of two of them, moreover, these authors felt compelled to write

that II the identifications are not always trustworthy II . The reasons

for this lack of interest in the scientific investigation of natural

resources have been laid out in masterly fashion by J.P. Hizal

(lan), Philippine national hero and writer, in lithe class in

Physics", i.e. Chapter 13 in "El Filibusterismo", which comment on

the state of science teaching at the eve of the last century:

IIPadre Millon II went deeply in to science, knew thephysics of Aristotle and Padre Amat, read carefully hisII Ramos, II and sometimes glanced at "Ganot." \iith allthat, he would often shake his head with an air ofdoubt, as he smiled and murmured: "tronseat".In regard to chemistry, no common knowledge wasattributed to him after he had taken as a premise thestatement of St. Thomas that water is a mixture and

proved plainly that the Angelic Doctor had longforestalled Berzelius, Guy-Lussac, Bunsen, and othermore or less presumptuous materialists. Moreover,inspite of having been an instructor in geography, hestill entertained certain doubts as to the rotundity ofthe earth and smiled maliciously when its rotation andrevolution around the sun were mentioned [. . .]. This

was the professor who [ . . .] called the roll anddirected many of the students to recite lesson from[. . .] memory, word for word. The phonographs got

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into operation, some well, some ill, some stammering,and received their grades. He who recited without anerror earned a good mark and he who made more thanthree mistakes a bad mark. II

Pannier (1982), writing on science in Latin America, noted - as

did Rizal, but in a less entertaining style - that lithe development

of science during the colonial period was greatly inhibited for

several centuries owing to the scant information transmitted from

Europe on the advance of European scientific thought and to the

prevaili..l.g religious dogmatismll.

THB U.S. PBRlOD: TAKING STOCK

The prevailing attitudes were to change radically at the turn

of the century. Early champions of U.S. rule in the Philippines were

quick to agree that lithe Philippines have been cursed by Spanish

influence since the day of Magellan's discoveryll and that there was a

need II for American citizens, with the welfare of their (!) country at

heart, [.. ..] to familiarize themselves with the details and con-

ditions in these new dominions and in the countries adjacent to themll

(\lhite, 1898 p. 16, 17).

And indeed the IIdetails and conditionsll soon began to pour out.

In 1905, the results of a detailed census were published through

which first quantitative information on numbers of fishermen

throughout the Philippines, and on their catch were made available

(see Table 1 for an example of the numerous quantitative data one can

find in that census report).

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Table 1: Number of fi,shermen in 1903 in the Phi Iippines by "race"a)

and sex according to the first U.S. Census (see Anon., 1905

Vol. IV., p. 985)

at Thus, according to this census, there were in the Phi Iippines,

in 1903,27 "mixed", 62 "yellow", 11 "white" and 3 "black" fishermenas we II as 5536 "brown" and 1(!) "mixed" female fishermen (!). It is

a pity no details are available or. how their "race" was assessed.This table also illustrates into which intellectual swamp one can bemisled by preconceive ideas.

b) Close'to the total figure of 119,000 used elsewhere in the census

report and in this paper.

The data in fact allow for a first estimation of the catch per

fisherman at the beginning of the century, as can be obtained by

dividing the number of fishermen in the Philippines (Anon., 1: ~.

564) by their catch, or 500,000 tons per year/119, 000 fishermen = 4.2

tons per year per fisherman which is considerably more than the 1. 3

tons per fisherman per year reported at present (see Smith et al.,

19t1O), and not necessarily less accurate, given the lack of reliable

statistics still prevailing to date.

Scientifically more important, however, was the systematic

ichthyological work which Jordan and Richardson (1910) initiated,

which A. \i.C. T. Berre continued and which, finally, led to the

emergence of a distinguished group of Filipino ichthyologists (H.A.

Roxas, A.F. Umali, P.R. Manacop, B.ll. Montalban, D. V. Villadolid and

others) .

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I I

Brown Mixed Ye Ilow White Black Total

if if if if if if+

111159 5536 27 1 62 - 11 - 3 - 116799

The task ahead of this group was the collection, description

and classification of the some 2,400 marine fish species of the

Philippines - the most diverse fish fauna in the world. By the onset

of \lorld \lar n, this task was essentially completed (see Herre,

1953).

Most of the publications which emerged from this work have been

reprin ted in four handy volumes by TFH Publications for the

Smithsonian Institution (II Philippines Bureau of Science Monographic

Publications on Fishes", 1 vol. and IISelected Ichthyological Papers

from the Philippine Journal of Science", 3 vol.).

This was fortunate because the war, which scattered the members

of this school, also led to the complete destruction of the

ichthyological collections and library of the Bureau of Fisheries

(Herre, 1953); a blow from which fish taxonomy in the Philippines

never fully recovered.

PHILIPPINE INDEPENDENCB AND POST-WAR RECONSTRUCTION

Post-war reconstruction and independence. from the U.S .A.

required, with regards to marine resources, more than the somewhat

esoteric work that had been conducted before: they required the

quantitative assessment of resources. The emphasis of marine

research which had been centered on taxonomy thus became explicitly

fishery - oriented, and a number of still valuable reports were

issued under a rehabilitation program executed by staff of U. S.IFisheries and Uildlife Services, working with staff of the Philippine

Bureau of Fisheries (see e.g. \lariel and Manacop, 1950 or Umali and

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\/arfel, 1950). Blanco and Montalban (1951) gives a bibliography

covering this period.

In the late 1950's, Dr. 1:.<. Tiews, working for a fisheries

project of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United

Nations (FAO), added to these efforts, and a large number of

publications covering major fishing grounds and resources species of

the Philippines were published by him and his associates, notably

Ronquillo and by other Filipino researchers. This period

lasted approximately to the end of the 1960's. The role of fisheries

research in the Philippines up to this period, and which is par-

ticularly pertinent to the topic of this contribution:

II The first marine research in the Philippines dates back160 _ years, and since then the main efforts ofresearchers of many nations have been directed toidentifying the very rich fauna of the archipelago.Albert ~l. Herre, in his Check List of Philippine Fishes[.. .] records no less than 2,277 fish species grouped in205 families and 716 genera. Oceanographic research bydeep-sea expeditions in the Philippine Archipelago hascontributed greatly to knowledge of the area. Mostnoteworthy are the British II H .M. S. Erebus and Terrorll(1839-43), the Spanish frigate IINavarrall (1851-58), theBritish IIH.M.S. Challengerll (1872-16), the U.S.fisheries steamer IIAlbatrossll (1901- 1909), the Germansurvey vessel IIPlanetll (1901-1912), the German cruiserIIHmdenll (1921), the Danish steamer IIR.S. S. Dana II II(1929), the Dutch steamer vessel IIH.M.S. VillebrordSnelliusll (193U), the American warship IICape Johnsonll(ht45), and the Danish Navy Corvette.IIGalatheall (1951).However, the first applied oceanographic investigationsof value for commercial fisheries were carried out from1941 to 1950 by the Philippine Fishery Programme of theUnited States Fish and \Iildlife Service. During this

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in the Philip pine economy of this period and the problems of the

sector were summarized by Storer (1967).

Tiews (1958) presented a brief account of fishery-related

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period an intensive exploration of Philippine andadjacentseas was made by the "U.S. Id/v. Spencer F.Baird". More than 1,100 oceanographic stations wereestablishedover an area of more than 800,000 sq. mi.The data collected are still being compiled and analyzedin the United States.After the termination of the Philippine FisheryProgramme in 1950, the Bureau of Fisheries continuedoceanographic research in the principal fishing areas,such as Manila Bay andLingayen Gulf. The operation hadto be discontinued in 1955 for a general overhaul of theresearch vessel "M/v David Starr Jord,an". Because oflack of funds, this delay lasted until 1957.Although fisheries research in the Philippines,especially from 1947-54, indicates a modern approach tofishery problems through systematic scientific studies,little attention has been paid to real marine fisherybiological research. Special research has onlyoccasionally been undertaken to describe the severallarval form.s of marine fish, to determine the racialstatus, spawning and feeding habits of tuna, and thetaxonomy and feeding habits of Rastrelliger spp. Thelack of a well-balanced fisheries research programmeminimized the usefulness of the oceanographic surveys incoastal areas intended to contribute to the explanationof fishery phenomena.The activities of the Bureau of Fisheries in marine

fisheries biological research are hardly significantcompared with its other activities. Great endeavorshave been made, for instance, in the fields offresh-and brackish-water fisheries biology, aquaculture,fish processing and especially in fisheries technology.The lack of knowledge of the biology and life history ofthe importan t marine food fishes, of their beha viour,distribution and migration, etc. became more obvious inrecent years when controversies arose among differentgroups of fishermen regarding depletion of the resourcesand extension of the fisheries."

FROW THE 7Q1s TO THB PRESENT: THB OYERFISHING PROBLEM

The modern theory of fishing, whose development was initiated

by F.!. Baranov, F.S. Russel and M. Graham before ~lorld ~lar II, was

elaborated in the late fifties (Schaefer, 1957; Beverton and Holt,

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1957; Ricker, 1958) but it took almost one decade for it to fully

take roots in its area of origin (Northern Europe and North

America) .It is therefore not surprising that approaches and methodo-

logies based on this theory, such as the detailed analysis of catch

and effort data or the estimation of growth and mortality parameters

of fish should not have been performed up to the end of the 1960s by

any of the fishery biologists working in the Philippines, be they

Filipinos or foreigners.

In the 1970s sharply declining incomes among small-scale

fishermen led to a number of socio-economic studies of their living

conditions (Smith et al., 1980) and to various government-sponsored

loan schemes aimed at motorization of boats and gear improvements

(Small Fisherman's Loan Programme, IIBiyayang Dagat", KKK Programme,

etc) .It is also in the 1970s, however, that it became clear that the

available database on the Philippine fisheries was woefully in-

adequate, both in quantity and quality, to assess the status 01 the

marine fisheries and of the resources.

This led, on one hand, to attempts, in cooperation with the

FAO/UNUP South China Sea Fisheries Uevelopment and Coordinating

Programme in Manila, to overhaul the fishery statistical data

collection system of the Philippines and, on the other hand, to

attempts to estiGlate the fishery potential of the country usmg

indirect methods, such as via comparative studies of maximum

sustainable yield per area (Smith et al., 1980, Table 6, Fig. 2).

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Also an attempt was made to apply the IIDelphi" technique to the

estimation of the potential yield of the Philippine marine fisheries.

As the results of this attempt have not been well disseminated, a

brief account of this exercise is given in the following paragraphs.

The Delphi method, which was first developed to assess the

bombing requirements of the US Air Force (Dalkey and Helmer, 1951),

is essentially an approach for helping experts in a certain area to

reach a usable consensus on a given controversial issue in their area

of expertise, given that conclusive evidence is not available. The

main feature of the method is that it usually allows for an increa-

sing consensus through an iterative, anonymous process which

completely eliminates the nefarious group-dynamics effect of normal

committee work (Linstone and Turoff, 1975). The method has been

rarely applied to fisheries (but see Zuboy, 1981 for what might be

the first published instance).

In late 1980, the Resource Policy and Strategy Research Program

of the M.inistry of Natural Resources of the Philippines sent an

invitation to various fisheries experts to participate in a Delphi

exercise on stock assessment, as follows:

liThe object of this exercise is to come up withapproximation of the extent and potential of thecountry's marine fishery resources. Empirical researchin this area has up to the present been minimal, makingresource management decisions extremely hard to arriveat. In the absence of definite resources information,the judgement of experts in the field is now beingsought so that a set of workable resources estimatesthat will be of practical value to the resource managermay be made available. Such resource estimate willserve two aims: 1) the management of presently exploitedfisheries; and, 2) the development of highly (promising)but still unexploited fisheries".

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This citation is from the material sent along with the

invitation. Also included were a brief description of the Delphi

method itself, miscellaneous BF AR catch statistics, a surface area

estimate of the Philippine shelf and questionaires partaining to the

first iteration of estimates, which was conducted through corres-

pondence.

From 21-23 November 1980, a workshop on the "Assessment of the

Philippine Fishery Wealth (Marine Sector): a Delphi approach" was

held in Baguio, in which the final iterations were to be performed by

the participating experts who came from various national and inter-

national agencies, (including the author of this paper).

The meeting did not go on as planned in that near the end, the

anonymity essential to the Delphi process broke down and the various

experts began to argue among themselves about the validity of "their"

estimates. Fig. 1 and Table 2 presents some of the results achieved

at this stage, as polish~d up by staff and consultants of the Fishery

Industry Development Council and of the Natural Resources Management

Center shortly after the meeting itself. Time will tell whether

these potential yield estimates are correct or not.

Since this meeting was conducted, a vast amount of empirical

data, reports and papers have become available which may make it

superfluous to resort, as far as stock assessments are concerned, to

indirect approaches such as the Delphi method.

The reader compiled and introduced by Aprieto et ale (1986)

contains, for example, a number of important contributions on the

marine fisheries of the Philippines, along with an exhaustive

coverage of the major bibliographic sources on the living marine

resources of the country.

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-- -

~

- 3,000""g 2,800>-'- 2,600CDa. 2,400

If)o 2,200)( 2,000-- 1,800

'0

.!!! 1,600>- I 400- ,c

+= 1,200c~ 1,000oa..

. ~estimate

. estimate

(Total Philippinecoastal pelagics)

. .'. . .. .

. . 200

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 II 12

Participants

0, 234567891011

Participants

Fig. 1. Ex~mples of intermedl~te results obtained during the Delphi exercise to estimate potential

yield of PhiIlpplne fisheries (see text). Note th~t in this round not ~II partlclpa'ntscontributed a figure for ~II Philippine co~stal w~ter fishes.

2,000 .1,800

-;::- 1,600CCD>-

; 1,400a.If)0- 1,200 .)(--

(All Philippine '0 1,000

coastal fishes) .!!! I . .>-15-cCD

"0 onn L .a..

Table 2: Estimated Potential of Philippine Marine Waters-

Source: NRMC/FIDC Workshop "Assessment of

(Marine Sector): A Delphi Approach.

Philippine Fishery Wealth

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Estimated

Area Specie Potent i a I Yield

<3000 tonnes)

TOTAL MARINE AREA All Fish 1,650 + 200

A. Coastal Waters All Fish 1,400..!.200Demersal 600 ..!.200

Pelagic 800 + 200

Region I (Tayabas Bay, All Fish 210 + 30

Sibuyan Sea, V i sa y an Demersal 90 + 30

Sea, Samar Sea & Pelagic 120 + 30

reiated bays)

Region II (Bohol Sea, All Fish 196 + 30

E. Sulu & re Iated Demersal 84 + 30

bays) Pelagic 112 + 30

Region III (Moro Sea, All Fish 140 + 20

Davao Gu If, Demersal 60 + 20

SE Mindanao Coast) Pel. a g i c 80 + 20

Region I V (W. Sulu Sea, A I I Fish 462 + 70-P a Ia w an, Mindoro) Demersal 198 !. 70

Pelagic 264 + 70

Region V (N and NW Luzon) All Fish 112 + 20

Demersal 48 + 20

Pelagic 64 + 30

Region V I (Pacific Coast A II Fish 280 + 40-except SE Mindanao) Demersal 120 + 40

Pelagic 120 + 30

B. Oceanic Water Pelagic 250 + 50

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The compilation and the references therein show that the

scientific evidence is now available on the basis of which sound

management decisions can be made. Hopefully, such decisions will be

made, given that the marine fisheries of the Philippines are in sore

need of management.

LITERATURB CITED

Anon. 1905. Censo de las Islas Filipinas. Vol. IV. Agricultura,estadistica social e industrial. U.S. Census Office,

\lashington, D.C.

Aprieto, V., J. Saeger and D. Pauly. (eds). 1966. Selected paperson marine fisheries research (1947 to 1966). Dept. Mar. Fish.Tech. Hep. 9, xx + 436 p.

Blanco, G.J. and H.R. Montalban. 1951. A bibliography of Philippinefishes and fisheries. Philipp. J. Fish. l( 2) : 115-136.

Blair, E.H. and J.A. Robertson. 1973. The Philippine Islands 1493-1896: exploration by early navigators, descriptions of theislands and their peoples, their history and records of theCatholic mission as related in contemporaneous books andmanuscripts showing the political, economic, commercial andreligious conditions of those islands from their earliestrelations with European nations to the beginning of the 19thcentury: translated from the original/edited and annotated byE.li. Blair and J .A. Roberston: with historical introductionand additional notes by E.G. Bourne; with maps, portraits andother illustrations. Cachos Hermanos, Inc., Mandaluyong,Rizal. 19 vols.

Beverton, R.J .H. and S.J. Holt. 1957. On the dynamics of exploitedfish populations. U.K. Min. Agric. Fish., Fish. Invest (Ser.2)19:533 p.

Dalkey, N. and O. Helmer. 1951. The use of experts for theestimation of bombing requirements - A Delphi experiment.R-1283-PR. The Rand Corporation, California.

16

Day, F. 1875-1878. The Fishes of India, being a natural history ofthe fishery known to inhabit the seas and fresh waters ofIndia, Burma and Ceylon. Vol. 1 and 2. Dawson, London.

Hamilton-Buchanan, F. 1822. An account of the fishes found in theRiver Ganges and its branches. Edinburgh and London.

Herre, A.W. 1953. Checklist of Philippine fishes. U.S. Dept. Int.,Fish. \iildl. Res. Rep. 20. 977 p.

Jordan, D.S. and R.E. Richardson. 1910. A check-list of Philippinefishes. Philipp. Bur. Sci. Monogr. Publ. Fish 1:3-78.

Lamme, \i.H. 1973. Collected Fish Paper of Pieter Bleeker. \{. JunkPublishers. The Hague.

Linston, H.A. and M. Turoff. 1975. The Delphi method. Addison-\{esley, Reading, Massachusetts, U. S . A.

Ochotorena, M. 1981. Ag tobig nog keboklagan: a Subanon folk epickinaadman. J. South. Philipp. 3:348-543

Pannier, F. 1982. Science in Latin America. p. 226-242. In: C.!"loraze (ed.) Science and the factors of inequality. UNESCO,Paris.

Ricker, H.E. 1958. Handbookstatistics of fish population.119. 300 p.

of computation for biologicalBull. Fish. Res. Board Can.

Rizal, J.P. 1891. El Filibusterismo. 4 ,Ghent. 286 p.

Schaefer, M.B. 1957. A study of the dynamics of the fishery foryellowfin tuna in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. Bull.I-ATTC/Bol. CIAT. 2:247-268.

Smith, I.R., M. Y. Puzon and C.N. Vidal-Libunao. 1980. ThePhilippine municipal fisheries: a review of resources,technology and socioeconomics. ICLARM Studies and Reviews 4,ICLARrvi, Manila. 87 p.

Storer, J .A. 1967. Aspects of fisheries in the developing Philippineeconomy. Stud. Trop. Oceanogr. 5:363-374.

Tiews, j(.1957.

1958. Research activities on marine fisheries biology inPhilipp. J. Fish. 6(1):71-105.

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Umali, A.F. and H.E. Warfel. 1950. Guide to the classification offishing gears in the Philippines. U.S. Dep. Int. Fish.Wild1- Servo Res. Rep. 17. 165 p.

Warfel, H.E. and P.R. Manacop.. 1950. Otter trawl explorations inPhilippine water. U.S. Dep. Int., Fish. \lildl. Servo Res.Rep. 25. 49 p.

White, T. 1898. Our new possesions: a graphic account, descriptionand historical of the tropic islands of the sea which havefallen under our sway, their cities, people and commerce,natural resources and the opportunities they offer toAmericans. Chicago.

Zuboy, J. 1981. A new tool for fishery managers: the Delphitechnique. N. Am. J. Fish.Managmt.1:55-59.

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