Golden bangus, a hit among aqua-culturists
FISHFARMERS have been trooping to the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) office in Dagupan to have a glimpse of the rare golden bangus (milkfish) that was recently turned over to the agency for research, breeding and propagation.
Only 16-month old and measuring 50 centimeters at 1.2 kilos, the fish is now being raised in brackish water by the BFAR-National Integrated Fisheries Technology Center (NIFTDC).
Dr. Westly Rosario, chief of the BFAR-NIFTDC, said his office intends to raise the rare bangus into a sabalo.
While that will take several years, including the determination of the sex of the fish, Rosario said BFAR-NIFTDC has the technology to make it breed sooner and produce eggs that will turn into fry and fingerlings for distribution to the fish farmers.
He explained that the fish may be injected with hormones or mated with existing sabalos in the center until it lays eggs.
“Who knows, from this rare golden milkfish, we can develop a more expensive specie of milkfish?” Rosario said, noting that the current market price of bangus is P130 to P140 per kilo.
Rosario pointed out that bangus is currently the country’s number one fish in the country, followed closely by tilapia.
BFAR-NIFTDC also has a technology of reversing the sex of tilapia to produce the bigger male stock.
The golden milkfish was turned over by Ariel Fernandez, a fish farmer from Barangay Linoc, Binmaley, to allow BFAR to study it and later breed and propagate it.
Rosario theorized that the golden milkfish may have been mixed with fry or fingerlings bought by Fernandez from a concessionaire that may have caught the specie from the wild.
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