The Department of Environment and Natural Resources on Monday vowed to work to ensure that the recent fishkill in the cities of Las Piñas-Parañaque won’t affect the rehabilitation of Manila Bay.
Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu assured the public that appropriate measures would be undertaken to make sure the recent fish kill in the Las Piñas-Parañaque wetland park would not affect the ongoing rehabilitation efforts in Manila Bay.
The agency is “looking deeply” into the cause of the fish kill in the protected wetland area situated within the Manila Bay region, he said.
“The DENR is now gathering more information on the extent and the cause of the fish kill in LPPWP,” the environment chief said.
The Environmental Management Bureau-National Capital Region has already conducted tests in LPPWP for several key water quality indicators, he said.
The results are being fast tracked “to enable us to determine what measures to undertake to mitigate adverse impacts over other marine life in the area,” he said.
“We are also doing this because we want to make sure that the fish kill incident will not cause any delay to the ongoing Manila Bay rehabilitation efforts,” he said.
According to DENR-NCR regional executive director Jacqueline Caancan, the water test results will be out “in the next few days.”
The results, she said, would complement studies being done by experts from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources of the Department of Agriculture, and the city governments of Las Piñas and Parañaque.
“While agriculturists initially assessed that the state of some of the fishes indicate dynamite fishing, our parameter tests on the water quality in the area could pinpoint other factors that may have contributed to the fish kill,” Caancan said.
Last Oct. 9, residents near the LPPWP saw a portion of the waters surrounding the wetland turning “milky white” in color.
Fish then gradually appeared along the shore, with some displaying an erratic “jumping” behavior.
The large fish kill appeared the next morning, with tons of various marine species crowded along a half-kilometer stretch of LPPWP’s Long Island, and about half-ton spread out over Freedom Island.
