Santiago Off The Beaten Path

When I was growing up, my father used to drive early to Sabangan Cove to wait for the fishermen coming home from the their night's fishing. He used to buy some of the big catch of the fishermen. He loved the black long nose fish.

In early mornings, there would be many fishing boats docking on the beach with their many fish they caught that night: tuna fish, silver fish, mahi-mahi, octopus, etc. The women in the village will come in with their huge woven baskets on their heads called "Labba" or "Bigao". The women bargain the catch of the fishermen . They will then sell the fish to the neighborhood or to the town. They made a living out of this. The "catch" were many and bountiful then.

The over-fishing, denudation of the forest that caused siltation and extinction of the bigger fishing corals, the residents of Sabangan can't survive anymore from their fishing occupation. The fish are no longer big and not many anymore.

As this picture show, the fish that was caught that day was half of a small bucket! And, the fish were small unlike in the old days that they can even catch a six-foot long tuna!