Pinoy fishers are back to the seas with stronger fiberglass bancas

“My father has always been a Pescador, our term for fishermen,” says Cocoy Garcia, a 38-year old fisher, as we strolled around his stilt village in Culion, Northern Palawan. “I was nine when he first took me out. We caught baskets of squid that first night, lured in by the glow of our petromax lamp.”

Two Bancas for the Philippines project beneficiaries haul up a netful of fish aboard a newly-made fiberglass boat in Busuanga, Northern Palawan. Through strong public and private sector support, the project has enabled fisherfolk to build 800 fibreglass boats across Palawan and the Visayas. 
Artisanal or small-scale fisheries employ 90% of the world’s capture fishers, providing 50% of global yields and 60% of wild-caught seafood. The Philippines has 1.3 million artisanal fishers, comprising 5% of its labour force. (Gregg Yan / WWF)

Together, Cocoy and his father fished for decades. The old Pescador taught his son the age-old skills of the sea – how to read the tide, mend nets, overhaul engines, repair boats, where to find the biggest fish.

EARTH HOUR Goes To The Seas

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“My banca was my sole means of earning a living,” explains a Coron fisherman gazing at the shattered remains of his boat.

Typhoon Yolanda smashed the country on 8 November 2013, bearing winds and waves so ferocious that most of Tacloban City was obliterated. The death toll has soared past 6200, with 2000 still missing. Over 100 days since the calamity, hundreds of communities still rely on relief efforts to survive. Worse, Yolanda’s 330kph winds demolished at least 30,000 bancas – the traditional outrigger boats of the Philippines, depriving around 145,000 fisherfolk of their livelihoods.