BFAR builds Fish Museum in Dagupan
THE Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) is building a Fish Museum at its compound in Dagupan City to complement the existing Fish Cemetery, which has been drawing a steady stream of tourists.
Dr. Westly Rosario, BFAR center chief and interim executive director of the National Fisheries Research and Development Institute, said the Fish Museum will be a 4 by 6-meter concrete gazebo-type structure made of bricks.
“It will complement the Fish Cemetery… it’s one way of teaching people how to love sea creatures,” Rosario told The PUNCH.
The museum will house, among others, the 1.5-meter skeleton of Moby Dick, the dolphin that was the first creature to be buried at the cemetery in February 1999.
Moby Dick, 3.2 meters long and weighed 1.2 tons, was transported from the Malabon Market to the BFAR center here after it was confiscated, at a routine checkpoint, from a group that intended to sell it.
The museum will also feature framed news clippings, photos and other information materials about the sea creatures buried at the cemetery, which has also recently been spruced up.
Rosario said this would provide visitors a more in depth educational tour of the BFAR center’s attractions.
The Fish Cemetery is the resting place of so far 12 dolphins, one sea turtle and three whales.
The biggest sea creature buried in the cemetery is a Minke whale, named “Roxanne”, 9.8 meters long and weighed more than five tons. It was found floating dead along Manila Bay and brought here on Dec. 31, 2008.
One of the rare species buried there is a dwarf sperm whale that beached for the first time along the seawaters in Barangay Pangapisan, Lingayen town in April 2005.#
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