Without a budget for Cebu City’s Bantay Dagat Office, no more wardens can patrol the sea for illegal fishers, or maybe protect some whale sharks.
Retired Supt. Ranulfo Sebusa of the Bantay Dagat lamented that the City Council did not approve his proposed P9.3 million budget.
He said fisherfolk reported seeing two whale sharks off the coast of Cebu City, which were first spotted 10 years ago.
“Maybe the whale sharks returned because illegal fishing declined and so has the uyap (krill) in the sea,” he said in Cebuano during a press briefing at the Public Information Office of City Hall.
Sebusa said he hasn’t seen the whale sharks but was told it was the size of a pump boat.
He said the sharks, which are migratory fish, were spotted at night and early in the morning.
The P9.3 million proposed budget included P1.6 million to buy a speedboat and a reserve speedboat engine worth P300,000.
It also includes the purchase of hand-held radios and scuba diving equipment.
Mayor Michael Rama, in a separate interview, said he will meet with Sebusa to explore other funding. He said he would ask his cousin lawyer Ernesto Rama to help arrange a donation of equipment by his Japanese friends to the Bantay Dagat.
Sebusa said Bantay Dagat also needs intelligence funds to strengthen their market denial campaign of illegally caught fish, mostly from the provinces of Zamboanga, Leyte and Bohol.
The office has 10 personnel and five fish wardens.
Sebusa said it is possible that the whale sharks the fishermen spotted near the SRP were among the whale sharks found in Oslob town in south Cebu.
It is also possible that these mammals are from the neighboring islands of Bohol.
“Now that we have curbed illegal fishing, the whale sharks are back,” said Sebusa during a press briefing.
Rama agreed that the coast watch force needs more equipment to protect and preserve the whale sharks recently spotted in the coastal waters./Correspondent Edison A. Delos Angeles