DOMESTICATION CHALLENGE: TAWILIS

(Updated March 7, 2021; originally uploaded May 27, 2015)

How many of you like Tawilis? I like mine nice and crisp, dipped in vinegar. I bet Tawilis canned Spanish style in oil and spices would also make a very popular comfort food if you can come across these at a reasonable price.

These fish currently fetch a premium and each time I get a bite, I sometimes wonder to myself if this will be the very last Tawilis I'll be able to taste before they become prohibitively expensive. Strange thing is that we still depend on vulnerable wild stock for our needs.

A few years back, I read a book by Paul Greenberg entitled Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food [see Amazon link]

The concern of this book is mainly about the domestication of fish species for human consumption and the economic and ecological impact, if any, of these domestications.

He makes the claim that farmed fish can be a very productive food source for people more so than with livestock and poultry (though less so than grains and root crops) in terms of tons of feed per tons of meat produced.

The book also mentions Galton's criteria when choosing a wild animal for domestication. That is:

1. Hardy;

2. Endowed with an inborn liking for man;

3. Comfort loving;

4. Able to breed freely; and

5. Needful of only a minimal amount of tending.

From this list, one can see that Tawilis doesn't quite meet these criteria. In no way are they hardy nor do they survive for long in aquaria. However, I believe that Tawilis has the potential to be bred into a very productive source of animal protein, if it can be reared in a controlled human environment--specifically repurposed Milkfish and Tilapia ponds.

I have done some internet research and I can confirm that as of the moment, no attempts have been made to rear Tawilis in aquaria or in ponds. The closest research I could find was an old academic article by Augustus C. Mamaril on the translocation of Tawilis to another body of freshwater, Lake Lanao showing the most potential for translocation.

There was also a discussion thread back in 2009 on the mypalhs.com forum about using Tawilis as a dither or feeder fish for aquaria. One of the users with the handle "Bokandesuyo" writes:

"Unfortunately tawilis does not survive daw in aquarium for long. It's about an hour at most and they're wondering why it can't live outside Tall [sic] Lake Comment nga ng officemate ko na pinakisuyo ko kumuha ng tawilis, ambilis daw mamatay. Pag-ahon pa lang, tepok na. I can't confirm the truth of this claim pero parang totoo."  

Various reasonable proposals were made on this such as drip acclimation using water sourced from Taal lake to the actual construction of a forward base on the lake shore where fish could be reared and brought to acclimation. In the end though, all of these are mere proposals and no experiments have been conducted as yet.

As you can probably see, the domestication of this fish can get very capital intensive and laborious. This also shows just how scant our knowledge is of this very significant fishery and how much of a mystery the Tawilis remains to us.

Then again, as I have read in Four Fish, cracking a fish' code was never going to be a walk in the park. In the case of the domestication of Sea Bass, scientists had to develop hormones to make fish spawn, enrich rotifers to get nutrition to the fry and set up fish pens in just the right locations for them to grow. Fish breeding is on the border of high science and industry.

Is the effort and the expense worth it?

--Yes.

Just imagine the potential of these domestications: Fresh and brackish water ponds currently stocked with Bangus and Tilapia will get stocked with sardinella. Ponds which could be harvested every few months without need of restocking. Ponds much more productive than what they had formerly been stocked with. Not only can farm raised Tawilis potentially solve our present food security problems as direct food for people, they can also serve as feed for other species. They can be made into fishmeal for hogs and other animals.

Tawilis don't need expensive feed. They can eat Rotifers and zooplankton. One just needs to create an ecosystem where rotifers and zooplankton can survive and propagate, this likely involves 'fertilizing' the water to allow them to grow.

What makes them such an enticing species for domestication is the very fact that they are at the bottom of the food chain, they have as much impact as raising Common Carp or Tilapia without the added possibility of habitat destruction--Tawilis just seem so benign.

Research and Experimentation as a Money-Making Venture

Research and experimentation into these fields is very important and indeed is something that our country needs to remedy. Seeing as this problem won't be solved by our government anytime soon, it falls to the private sector to provide the necessary funding and incentives for this research.

I am thus giving out and making public this idea of Tawilis domestication as a potential venture of by a private entrepreneur/s possibly in conjunction with a fisheries department of a reputable university or fisheries laboratory.

The company that can domesticate this freshwater sardinella can claim rights to this product and possibly become rich.

Tawilis Extinction

There is another compelling argument for Tawilis domestication. It is the very marvel of the Tawilis' volcanic origins and inevitable demise.

The origins of the freshwater species in Taal lake are well known. The lake was once a bay connected to the sea until the volcano erupted and cut it off from the sea. Later on, freshwater streams feeding the lake eventually turned the lake from a landlocked saltwater lake to a freshwater one. The species that got trapped inside the adapted to the freshwater environment.

This results in a very special ecological make up with fish and other aquatic animals (like sea snakes and sharks) you would normally expect to find in the sea inside of a freshwater lake.

Yet all these species are vulnerable. Since they are trapped in a lake with no way out, they are literally trapped in the aquatic equivalent of a desert island with no way out when invasive species like tilapia, carp, milkfish and janitor fish start taking over their tiny refuge. Not only that, the pressures of pollution are resulting in massive fish kills that the already overfished Tawilis may never recover.

Soon, all that will remain of exotic freshwater fishes like the Maliputo will be reproductions in ₱50 bills.

Then again, we have to criticize our short-sighted society and government. Its true that the Tawilis would never fetch the sort of imagination as the Maliputo which was immortalized in the ₱50 bill of the latest currency series, but we'll feel equally empty inside when they disappear for good--with unopened cans of Tawilis fetching the highest prices in the name of scientific research.

Update:  As a result of the 2020 eruption of Taal lake, the Department of Science and Technlogy apparently decided to fund a conservation project which involved the removal of some of the Tawilis from Taal Lake to an offsite facility.  On February 23, 2021, a breakthrough in the project was reported in GMA News where it was claimed that some Tawilis specimens have survived the transfer from Taal Lake and are now being housed at the University of the Philippines - Los Baños Limnological Station in Laguna.  THIS IS GREAT NEWS!

Related Articles

The Corn: A Poem

Dredge Laguna de Bay

Energy and Fuels Price Hike: Case for Vegetable Oil

Parking: Public Service and Public Good

Soaring Prices of Rice

SOARING PRICES OF RICE

Photo Taken from Manila Standard Today

Manila Standard Today on the front page of its June 16, 2014 issue carries the story, Prices of rice, garlic, ginger rocketing. The reason: The supply s running out. According to a news report on DZBB 594, the main rice supply for Metro Manila comes from Central Luzon, specifically Nueva Ecija and, well simply, the rice suppliers just haven't been dumping [bagsakan] as much of the stuff as it would normally dump. According to the map below, its nowhere near harvest season anywhere in the Philippines so, as you would expect, the government's response will be to import the rice (as well as the garlic and ginger).

Photo Courtesy of IRRI

Philippines has never been self sufficient in rice in recent times. This is partly due to [or rather mostly due] to government's ineptitude in providing basic infrastructure and incentives for rice growers. One of my professors in college, the great Bernardo Villegas, since the 2000s has been complaining of the lack of farm to market roads and post-harvest drying facilities. Foreign travelers would remark that it is so quaint that Filipinos would continue to dry rice by the roadsides—the traditional way, they would say as a euphemism. But this is extremely wasteful and inefficient. Not only would the rice be at the mercy of wind and rain; foreign objects would also infiltrate the rice; pest could also get to it, but; more importantly, the moisture content would not have been sufficiently reduced leading to the faster spoilage of rice, preventing the accumulation of bumper crops and stockpiles for lean months such as today, let alone dry enough for international standards to be able to think of exporting it. Another government shortcoming would be land reform, and to be honest, I wouldn't know exactly what would happen if you gave farmers their land, they might just end up subsistence farmers, though with technology, the right seeds and irrigation, they might just create a surplus. Unfortunately, government is too engrossed with cash crops [read: capital intensive] such as sugarcane and fruits to think about its staples.

But let us not put all the blame on our wonderful and powerful government. Filipinos can also be especially wasteful and prodigal with their food. This wastage is well documented, I there are at least three studies that peg rice wastage at: P23million a day; P14.4million/day and; 3Tbsp/day per person. Imagine that. A lot of it goes to waste in the form of the hardened and browned rice stuck to the bottom of cauldrons and waste at fiestas, the Ilonggos have a particularly disturbing tradition of always leaving a little bit of rice on the plate, to show the host that you've had enough to eat. This problem has been so pernicious that lawmakers have decided to make it unlawful for restaurant owners to refuse to serve less than a full cup of rice, the reason being that a customer is less likely to waste half a cup of rice if that was what they got or asked for. So far, it hasn't been passed yet.

-o0o-

I've thought about brown rice. Makati City has made it into a campaign, trying to educate people as to the health benefits of brown rice—it is rich in fiber, vitamins, minerals and proteins and can also reduce cholesterol. However, it is also expensive, and this surprises me. Technically, brown rice is a “less processed” form of white rice, meaning that it undergoes fewer steps to become what it is, therefore, it should be cheaper. I think the main reason for its expense is branding. Brown rice can afford to be expensive because it is viewed as a health food and not as an everyday food. This is disheartening because I think it should be cheaper than white rice and if anything, it should be the “DFA” rice. I honestly believe that people would buy more of the stuff if it was cheaper and properly campaigned for. Some drawbacks: storage is trickier and it would use more fuel and time to cook, but there are ways around that.