No tuna, no luck

Ernesto Buasan fiddles with a pack of cigarettes and bites his lower lip. The 59-year-old is nervous. He is sitting on a beige plastic chair in front of a small office where he just ­handed in a piece of paper. „Forty-two and a half kilograms,“ it read. That‘s what the scale across the street had recorded. It is the weight of Ernesto Buasan‘s catch from last night. It had taken two men to hoist the huge tuna onto the scale.

While the day in the port district of Tabaco is just beginning, Buasan is already longing for a break. He spent the entire night at sea and had reached Tabacoʼs harbour at six in the morn­ing — two large dolphinfish and the yellowfin tuna weighing more than 40 kilograms in tow. He has no idea how much money heʼll earn with his catch. The woman in the office who took the note determines the prices. „It was a good night,“ Buasan says. But before today, he said, he hadn't caught a single fish for ten days. „I had to stay home on San Miguel and hope for good weather.“

If the sea is too rough, the fishermen have to stay on land

A cold front was moving through the Gulf of Lagonoy, which is why no one had dared to venture out onto the rough sea. The waves were beating too high for the traditional fishermenʼs canoes. The heavy rain and strong winds were unusual for this time of year — and made it impossible for the men to go out in their narrow boats to earn their livelihoods. Twenty years ago, Ernesto Buasan says, we would never have had weather like this. Flordeliza Barasona comes out of the office where Buasan is waiting and turns to him. The 59-year-old runs a „casa“ in the port of Tabaco, where fishermen sell her their catch.