Sustainable Farming of Spiny Lobster in Western Mindanao, Philippines

摘要

There are biological and technological criteria often cited as prerequisites for any potential species for culture. This study tabulates some measured criteria for some candidate species (Trachinotus blochii, Rachy-centron canadium, Latis calcarifer, Lutjanus argen-timaculatus, Carranx sp, etc) for culture in southern Mindanao against the performance of spiny lobster, Panulirus sp. in western Mindanao, Philippines. The tabulation will be presented during the proper workshop. However, my highlights will focus on the performance of spiny lobster in Zamboanga del Sur, where the most commonly caught spiny lobsters in the area are the Panulirus ornatus, P. versicolor and P. longipes complex. In Zamboanga Peninsula, an annual production of 90 metric tonnes of spiny lobsters can still be sustained. A high demand for spiny lobsters has created a lucrative market, but harvesting it from the wild without understanding the biology and its habitat has depleted the lobster population in most areas of western Mindanao. In 1984 the bulk of about 241 MT landed lobsters (DA-IX Municipal Production Report 1985) were coming from Basilan and in the east and west coast of Zamboanga City (Pers. comm. 2004). At the present time, in all provinces in western Mindanao lobster farming has declined, particularly in the province of Basilan. This is due to non-selective hunting (even egg-bearing lob-sters were caught and fattened; eventually they died and were sold very cheaply). There were, however, some initiatives undertaken in Zamboanga del Sur that were triggered by a surprising observation that resulted in some enthusiasm to revive the present fat-tening production system into a sustainable culture of spiny lobster.