Fisheries officers of Southeast Asian countries such as Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Thailand, Viet Nam, and the Philippines attended a training in Iloilo towards a move to restore the population of overexploited aquatic species in their respective countries.
The Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center/Aquaculture Department (SEAFDEC/AQD), an international research center based in Tigbauan, organized the international training which hopes to enable Southeast Asian countries to initiate resource enhancement activities or improve their current programs.
Malaysian trainee Buniamin Bin Kiprawi said that the six-day training course with funding support from the Government of Japan Trust Fund (GOJ-TF), helped him to understand better how to carry out resource enhancement activities.
“Malaysia has lots of activities in fry stocking, fry release, that is what I understand what stock enhancement is, but after getting my knowledge here, I understand more in stock enhancement. It is not only fry releasing, it is not only broodstock releasing. We [also] have to monitor, we have to do the assessment, and the re-evaluation,” he said.
The participants were oriented on the principles of stock enhancement, marine ecosystems, coastal resource management, and genetic considerations for stock enhancement among others.
“I learned very much [a lot] and I hope to transfer my knowledge that I learned from this training to my colleagues, to my staff, and especially the staff working at the provincial,” said Syvann Leng, a participant from Cambodia.
“Though the time is very short, we gained a lot, we owe a lot to SEAFDEC,” he added.
This training course, which started on April 16, 2018, is the outcome of SEAFDEC/AQD’s research activities under its GOJ-TF Program on establishing or developing methodologies on sea ranching and release strategies for CITES-listed and overexploited species such as abalone, mangrove crab, sea cucumber, seahorse, and Napoleon wrasse./PN
