by MARLON ALEXANDER S. LUISTRO

This three-part investigative report by PCIJ fellow Marlon Luistro looks at how the government and fish cage operators can save the lake from dying, without sacrificing the livelihood of those who earn from fish cages.

TALISAY and MATAAS NA KAHOY, BATANGAS — Looking down from the wind-swept resorts and hotels of Tagaytay City, vacationers see Taal Lake as pristine and as inviting as before. Indeed, from a distance, the 24,356-hectare body of water that is part of one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions remains a sight to behold, with gentle breezes often rippling its surface.

	TAAL Lake, the third largest lake in the Philippines, is deteriorating fast, choked by over 9,000 fish cages that have mushroomed in its waters. [photo courtesy of Balikas]

Usually overshadowed by Laguna de Bay next door, Taal Lake is tapped for aquaculture, fishing, navigation, and tourism purposes; it is even the water resource of the posh Tagaytay Highlands resort.

The lake is also the habitat of the endemic species tawilis, the world’s only commercial freshwater sardine, and duhol, one of the only three freshwater sea snakes in the world. In the 1920s, it was said to have the most diverse fishery resources among the Philippine lakes, with at least 101 species from 32 families of fish.

These days, Taal Lake’s tilapia farms are now a major source of tilapia, and have as much as a 68-percent share in Calabarzon (Cavite-Laguna-Batangas-Rizal-Quezon) Region’s annual production of the popular food fish.

But the third largest lake in the Philippines is deteriorating fast, and some of its native fish species are already gone. Declared a protected area in 1996 under the National Integrated Protected Area System (NIPAS) Act, Taal Lake nevertheless seems destined to become yet another example of the sorry impact of laws that have no teeth, implementing agencies with limited manpower and financial resources, businessmen who are either clueless or greedy (or both), and local officials who at the very least appear to lack foresight.

	NEXT PART 2 looks at how legal loopholes and politics are exacerbating Taal Lake's woes.

“The intention to protect the lake is good,” remarks environmental lawyer Asis Perez. “It’s just that good intention is not enough.” He echoes other legal experts and environmentalists in lamenting that major weaknesses within the NIPAS’s primary implementing agency, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), are among the main reasons for the current dismal state of Taal Lake.

FISH KILLS AND MUD-TASTING FISH
Just last August, a fish kill struck the lake, which saw at least 31 metric tons of tilapia and 1.5 metric tons of bangus dead. The next month, another fish kill claimed 35 metric tons of tilapia. Although neither fish kill was as massive as the one that occurred in the lake in December 2005, experts at the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) saw these as yet more signs of the continued decline in the lake’s water quality. Recently, too, harvests of tawilis, bangus, and tilapia from the lake began tasting like mud — “naglasang putik” — leading fishers to despair.

Experts including those from BFAR attribute this to the increased chemical load in the lake that leads, among other things, to algal blooms, which in turn cause fish kills and mud-tasting fish. Recent studies in fact indicate that Taal Lake is already in the advanced stages of eutrophication or nutrient enrichment. The excess nutrients stimulate excessive plant growth or algal blooms. When these decompose, they reduce the dissolved oxygen in the water and can cause other organisms to die.

	Location map of Taal Lake courtesy of Wikipedia

Dr. Macrina Zafaralla, a phycologist who has studied Taal Lake extensively, says that while domestic wastes from river discharge are partly to blame for the excess nutrients, fish cages are the primary source of these, specifically the fish feeds, urine, and feces, which find their way to the bottom of the lake.

TAWILIS UNDER THREAT
In a public hearing last year, Protected Areas Wildlife Bureau Director Mundita Lim also reported that four of the lake’s seven endemic species, including tawilis, were already under threat of extinction due to the overexploitation of fishery resources and the introduction of non-native species, which includes the tilapia that fish cage operators propagate.

This is hardly a picture of a protected area, which the NIPAS Act defines as “identified portions of land and water set aside by reason of their unique physical and biological significance, managed to enhance biological diversity, and protected against destructive human exploitation.”

But observers say the DENR has simply been unable to administer, control, and regulate activities in the lake.

Perez allows that since the law gave DENR “the responsibility,” it “would always be blamed” for anything bad happening to the lake, “even if it’s not (DENR’s) fault.” There are those, however, who say that DENR should not let anything stop it from doing its job.

“It’s no excuse,” says Leo Aranel, chairperson of the municipal fisheries and aquatic resources management council in Alitagtag town. “If they can’t handle the job, they could easily pass it on to the municipal governments, which in turn would pass it on to us.”

“It’s just that the DENR is not ready to accept its responsibility,” he adds, asserting that the agency acts only “when things get worst.”

	FISH cages are mainly to blame for the continuing decline in Taal Lake's water quality. [photo by Marlon Luistro]

For sure, the current zero-fish-cage-in-Taal-Lake stance of Environment Secretary Joselito ‘Lito’ Atienza, who was appointed to the post only in mid-2007, comes several years late. Atienza has also found himself up against BFAR, municipal mayors, and green groups who insist that the solution lies in simply limiting the number of fish cages in the lake.

BFAR used to have administrative jurisdiction over Taal Lake, but DENR took over after the lake became a protected area. Policy-making functions, meanwhile, were transferred from local government units to the Protected Area Management Board (PAMB), which is headed by the DENR.

Technically, Taal Lake is part of the Taal Volcano Protected Landscape (TVPL), in which the crown jewel is the world’s smallest active volcano. But residents of the 13 towns and three cities that rim the lake say it can more than hold its own in terms of delights derived from it — or at least it used to.

In the 1970s, say lakeside residents, fish could still be seen jumping from the waters, enabling fisherfolk to catch these with ease and delighting tourists to no end. Fisher Mario Gonzales recalls that people used to bathe and swim in the lake. “The waters were so fresh and crystal-clear that I could even use it as a mirror,” he says. “The wind was so refreshing, there was no unpleasant smell, and we could fish anywhere we want.”

This was still true up until the 1980s. But fishers like Gonzales say the lake’s now murky and foul-smelling waters make their skin itch, even as the size of fish catches keep shrinking each day.

“The simplest way to define water pollution is when the lake can no longer provide the least of its resource uses, like bathing and swimming,” says Zafaralla, a professor at the Institute of Biological Sciences at the University of the Philippines-Los Baños (UPLB).