San Miguel Bay is a large

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

in the

Bicol Peninsula The Bicol Region, designated as Region V, is an administrative region of the Philippines. It comprises six provinces, four on the Bicol Peninsula (the southeastern end of Luzon): Albay, Camarines Norte, Camarines Sur, and Sorsogon, and two ...

Luzon Luzon ( , ) is the largest and most populous List of islands in the Philippines, island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the List of islands of the Philippines, Philippine archipelago, it is the economic and political ce ...

island in the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

. It encompasses the provinces of

Camarines Norte Camarines Norte (; ), officially the Province of Camarines Norte (; ), is a Provinces of the Philippines, province in the Philippines located in the Bicol Region in Luzon. Its capital is Daet, Camarines Norte, Daet, the most populous town in the ...

and

Camarines Sur Camarines Sur (; ), officially the Province of Camarines Sur (Central Bikol language, Bikol: ''Probinsya kan Habagatan na Camarines''; ), is a Provinces of the Philippines, province in the Philippines located in the Bicol Region on Luzon. Its ca ...

. The province of Camarines Norte is to the west and Camarines Sur is to the south and east of the bay. The coastline consists of numerous sandy beaches and

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows mainly in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. Mangroves grow in an equatorial climate, typically along coastlines and tidal rivers. They have particular adaptations to take in extra oxygen a ...

forests. Ninety-five percent of the seabed in the bay is covered by sandy and silt soils. The remaining five percent is covered by coral reefs, these are mostly located in the northwest and northeast of the bay.

Seagrass Seagrasses are the only flowering plants which grow in marine (ocean), marine environments. There are about 60 species of fully marine seagrasses which belong to four Family (biology), families (Posidoniaceae, Zosteraceae, Hydrocharitaceae and ...

and

algae Algae ( , ; : alga ) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthesis, photosynthetic organisms that are not plants, and includes species from multiple distinct clades. Such organisms range from unicellular ...

beds line the shorelines of the islands at the exit to the

Philippine Sea The Philippine Sea is a List of seas#Marginal seas by ocean, marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean, Western Pacific Ocean east of the list of islands of the Philippines, Philippine Archipelago (hence the name) and the List of seas#Largest seas ...

. San Miguel Bay has a total annual fish production of about 20,000 t was recorded from the Bay. About 64% of this was contributed by some 5,100 small-scale fishermen, while the rest was landed by 95 commercial trawlers of varying sizes. Economic analysis revealed the existence of strong competition among the different fishing sectors over the use of the Bay's resources and income is unevenly distributed in favor of the commercial trawlers, which employ only 7% of the total number of fishermen in the area. Ownership and earning of the trawlers were concentrated in 35 families, while the small-scale fishing gears were distributed evenly among 2,000 families. San Miguel Bay is a major fishing ground on the Pacific coast of the Philippines. The Bay is exploited by trawler operators and small-scale fishermen competing for the same resources. In the Murillo Velarde Map of 1734, this inlet was called Ensenada de Naga or Naga Bay. In a latter Velarde/Bagay Map 1744-49, it was simply attached to name of the town at mouth of the bay, Siruma. By the early 1970s competition among increasing numbers of small-scale fishermen operating within San Miguel Bay already had led to a decline in catch per effort. As competition from trawlers began to increase, the perceived impact on the stock became an issue of growing concern among the thousands of small-scale fishermen affected. At the same time, the first of the world-wide energy crises struck, leading to major increases in the cost of operation. The close of the decade saw the small-scale fishermen of San Miguel Bay caught between declining catches and increasing costs.

References

Further reading