A Visit to the Fish Port of Gen. Santos City

A few days ago, I had the chance to visit again the fish port of Gen. Santos City. As far as I can remember, it was my third time to visit the fish port. My first visit was many years ago, when I did a documentary about our mission stations. Our mission house in Mindanao is in Gen. Santos City. My second visit was last year, when we took a group of our seminarians for a tour of the fish port. They spent their semestral vacation in GenSan for about two weeks to give recollections to students of Siena schools and at the same time to campaign for vocations.

This time, I had visitors from Manila whom I took for a tour at the fish port. They were two of my former staff from Letran Media Center in Manila, of which I was the head for almost 10 years. They were on vacation for a few days. There was a seat sale in a budget airline and they have decided to buy tickets to visit Davao City and Gen. Santos City.

The fish port is located several kilometers away from our mission house. We had to leave at 5:30 AM on a Sunday morning to catch the activities at the fish port at about 6:00 AM. It was about 30 minutes drive from our house.

Upon arrival at the fish port, we paid P10.00 for parking and vehicle entrance fee. All those who want to go inside the fish port should be in proper attire, that is, long pants, t-shirt with sleeves (short pants and sleeveless shirts are not allowed) and white rubber boots. Since we do not have white rubber boots, we have to rent white rubber boots for P20.00. You can see all the people inside the fish port wearing white rubber boots. After that, we proceeded to go inside Market 1. There one can see the freshly caught tuna and other kinds of fishes being weighed, classified and traded. At the entrance of the market are foot baths to disinfect the boots of all those going inside the marketplace.

There are many stalls of fish dealers. Men carry the large yellow fin tuna and blue marlin fishes from the boats, docked in front of the market, to the dealers’ stalls. The tuna fishes are weighed and classified. The weight of the tuna probably ranges from 50 kilos to about 80 or even 100 kilos. The size of the tuna fishes is as big as the men who carry them. There are designated classifiers, men with stainless tube about the diameter of a ball pen and about two feet long. They puncture the tuna fish at the dorsal part to get a sample of its flesh. The tuna are then classified into grades – A, B or C, with grade A being the highest class and which is best for tuna sashimi.

There are so many outrigger boats docked at the wharf. These are the boats that go to the deep seas of Mati, Davao Oriental and other parts of the Philippine seas to catch fish. Each big boat also carries with them several small motorized boats. These boats are the ones used by individual fishermen to catch tuna through hook and line. Each fishing expedition of the big outrigger boats can last for two weeks. With an average crew of about 18 persons, they take with them gallons upon gallons of fuel, diesel for the big outrigger boat and gasoline for the small boats. They also pack with them about 50 blocks of ice to preserve their catch until they return back to GenSan. Each expedition may catch about 60 pieces or more of the big tuna fishes. They also bring along food provisions enough to last for the entire duration of their expedition, with a designated cook to prepare their daily meals.

Before we left the fish port, at about 7:30 AM, the fish trading activities seem to be winding up to a close. It was a Sunday. Trading can last for a whole day and all through the night on other days of the week.