HomelessDiver
Contributor
GMANews - Boracay waters now off-limits to fishers
Yea right, good luck with that. It's the local guys, not some mysterious ghost fleet from nearby. Actually, whoever came up with that idea should be publicly humiliated because Boracay IS overfished. Theres gotta be way better fishing in those areas. We were at Crocodile once, (which is extremely close to the shore but still good diving) and the guys were right there, dropping hooked lines off the boats. Exactly where people are diving. LDS Opr called the coastguard,response: "no, theres no one fishing at Crocodile" (as we waited in the boat for 30 minutes for someone to arrive, and were still on scene).
Theres fish to be seen but nothing on the scale as there should be in this area. Lucky to see a shark once every 2 weeks of daily diving. Even the well known no-fish areas like dive sites, I still find rebar weights with longline small hooks.
Anyway, I was down by Red Pirates this morning where a dozen smaller fishing boats stay in front of an empty lot - sure enough, the morning catch was getting parceled out into buckets and onto poles. And to these guys, nothing is sacred from the hook/net. Just open any NatGeo sealife picture book and these guys sell it. Few months ago: I was telling friends about a massive sponge crap I'd just seen on a night dive (near shore) .... .... ... guy asks where I'd seen it, and I almost didnt realize it wasnt one of my friends but one of the locals.
Guess it's gonna be a hard push to enforce this since almost all the resorts buy their fish from the locals.
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Yea right, good luck with that. It's the local guys, not some mysterious ghost fleet from nearby. Actually, whoever came up with that idea should be publicly humiliated because Boracay IS overfished. Theres gotta be way better fishing in those areas. We were at Crocodile once, (which is extremely close to the shore but still good diving) and the guys were right there, dropping hooked lines off the boats. Exactly where people are diving. LDS Opr called the coastguard,response: "no, theres no one fishing at Crocodile" (as we waited in the boat for 30 minutes for someone to arrive, and were still on scene).
Theres fish to be seen but nothing on the scale as there should be in this area. Lucky to see a shark once every 2 weeks of daily diving. Even the well known no-fish areas like dive sites, I still find rebar weights with longline small hooks.
Anyway, I was down by Red Pirates this morning where a dozen smaller fishing boats stay in front of an empty lot - sure enough, the morning catch was getting parceled out into buckets and onto poles. And to these guys, nothing is sacred from the hook/net. Just open any NatGeo sealife picture book and these guys sell it. Few months ago: I was telling friends about a massive sponge crap I'd just seen on a night dive (near shore) .... .... ... guy asks where I'd seen it, and I almost didnt realize it wasnt one of my friends but one of the locals.
Guess it's gonna be a hard push to enforce this since almost all the resorts buy their fish from the locals.
