A P5 million worth of blue swimming crab hatchery will soon to be built in the Municipality of Concepcion.
The building alone is foreseen to cost around P3.3 million and the remaining amount will be used to purchase other equipment for the operations.
The blue swimming crabs are abundant in the towns of Barotac Viejo and Banate in northern Iloilo.
Provincial Agriculture Office head Dr. Ildefonso Toledo said that since 1990, the population of these crabs continue to fall.
“Now, if we are going to retrieve the data of the processing plants, before, when they started in 2000, they are processing 20 tons a day,” Toledo said.
He said that the current processing of the blue swimming crabs could not even reach one ton.
“That is a remarkable decrease in the population sang (of the) blue seaming crab,” Toledo said.
Toledo points out the number of picking and processing plants that exports crab meat is declining too.
He said in that in 2000, there are 11 processing plants in Carles, Concepcion, and Banate, but “starting 2014, there were only two picking plants exists. One is in Carles and the other one was in Concepcion.”
Due to the lack of its production, Toledo said that the Provincial Government wanted to put up a hatchery to address the problem.
Toledo then went to the different municipalities and found out that Northern Iloilo Polytechnic State College in Concepcion is a “very ideal site” for the blue swimming crab hatchery.
Currently, they are still waiting for the signing of Memorandum of Understanding together with the NIPSC and Governor Arthur Defensor Sr. before they could start the construction of the hatchery.
“Within the year, we wanted to start the construction,” Toledo said.