Mangrove Revegetation Potentials of Brackish-Water Pond Areas in the Philippines - Aquaculture and the Environment: A Shared Destiny - page 42

a steady decline of production from this sector is apparent from 2001 to 2010 and this may
be due to the under productivity of almost 40% of brackish-water ponds in the country.
Included in these areas are three of the provinces with the largest hectarage of brackish-
water ponds, namely former Zamboanga del Sur, Bulacan and Aklan ( Table 7 ).
Table 7. Volume of total aquaculture and brackish-water pond production in the top 10
provinces with the largest hectarage of brackish-water ponds in the Philippines.
In terms of the physical area utilized, brackish-water aquaculture is the biggest sub-sector in
Philippine aquaculture (Cruz, 1997), however, its contribution to total fisheries production
may not be proportionate with its physical magnitude in terms of area covered (~169,000 ha
in 1995, Yap, 2007).
4. Management options for brackish-water pond areas in the Philippines
Brackish-water ponds in the Philippines may be classified into two: 1) those with valid legal
instrument of ownership and operation, 2) those that do not have legal instrument of
operation and undocumented. The first classification are of two types, those with FLAs and
those with land titles. As presented in the previous section, 40 to 50% of these ponds, are
now left idle or underproductive. A number of authors discussed several management
strategies to address this problem (Primavera, 2000, 2006; Yap, 2007; Samson and Rollon,
2008; Primavera and Esteban, 2008; Primavera et al, 2012). Samson and Rollon in 2008
proposed a possible decision tree of options for idle and active brackish-water ponds in the
Philippines. These options are specifically for those with FLAs.