SDG 14
Life Below Water Philippine Fisheries
Through Data:
Trends, Patterns, Insights

Background of the Study

The Philippines, being an archipelagic country, derives a significant portion of its overall annual food consumption from fish, other seafoods, and aquatic products; up to 22.5% of the average Filipino's diet comes from fish products[1]. However, despite this significance, the Philippines has yet to achieve self-sufficiency as in 2024, 25,000 metric tons of fish were set to be imported[2]; it is therefore only natural to ask how far are the Philippines' domestic fish and seafood product industries from achieving self-sufficiency. Monitoring aquatic food production is important not only economically, but also ecologically; a review paper found that destructive fishing practices such as dynamite fishing, cyanide fishing, and muro-ami fishing were prevalent and remained a lingering problem in the Philippines from the 1930s up until the present date[3]. These concerns warrant an investigation into the scale of both destructive and non-destructive fishing practices in the name of assessing sustainability. The economic significance of fish and seafood product industries lies not only in the provision of food, but also in their contribution to employment; from 2021 to 2025, it was found that there was an average of 1,313,000 people employed in these industries at any given month [4]; with such a sizeable and significant industry, one may then be inclined to ask regarding the projections of how might this industry grow in the foreseeable future. These questions may be helped answered by first answering the overarching question of this project: what is the trend in the volume of fish product production in the Philippines?

Research
Questions

1. What is the trend in the volume of overall fish production per fishing sector in the Philippines?

2. What is the trend in the volume of overall fish production per region in the Philippines?

Hypothesis

Null Hypothesis (H₀)

There is no significant trend in the volume of overall fish production of the different fisheries sector in the Philippines from 2002 to 2024 per year.
There is no significant trend in the volume of overall fish production of the different fisheries sector in the Philippines from 2002 to 2024 per region.

Alternative Hypothesis (H₁)

There is a significant increasing trend in the volume of overall fish production of the different fisheries sector in the Philippines from 2002 to 2024 per year.
There is a significant increasing trend in the volume of overall fish production of the different fisheries sector in the Philippines from 2002 to 2024 per region.

Data Collection

This datasheet was gathered from Philippine Statistics Authority OpenSTAT database. We downloaded the Volume of Production by Geolocation, Species, Year and Quarter for Commercial Fisheries, Inland, Aquaculture, Municipal Inland Fisheries from 2002 - 2024. We used Python's pandas library to clean and preprocess the data to be used for analysis. THe data was then exported to a Google Sheets document for easy access and visualization.

View Full Spreadsheet

Statistical Results

Python's scipy.stats library was used to perform statistical analysis on the data. We used the linregress function to perform linear regression on the data, which provided us with the slope, intercept, r-value, p-value, and standard error of the regression line.

Overall Fish Production Trend per Sector

Commercial Fisheries: Slope: -65.7368, p-value: 0.0021, Std Err: 21.3494

Aquaculture: Slope: 70.6809, p-value: 0.00197, Std Err: 22.8399

Fisheries: Slope: 2.3524, p-value: 0.9581, Std Err: 44.8246

Marine Municipal Fisheries: Slope: -30.0321, p-value: 0.0043, Std Err: 10.52

Inland Municipal Fisheries: Slope: 1.4145, p-value: 0.6760, Std Err: 3.3847

Overall Fish Production Trend Interpretation

The results show that there are trends in commercial, aquaculture, and marine municipal fisheries. Given the negative slope for the commercial and marine municipal fisheries, it shows that there is a negative trend in production for these sectors, while there is a positive trend in production for aquaculture

The fisheries and inland municipal fisheries sectors do not show any significant trends, as indicated by their p-values being greater than 0.05. This suggests that the production in these sectors has remained relatively stable over the years and there is no trend in their production

Overall Fish Production per Region Geospatial Graph

Commercial Fisheries:

Aquaculture:

Fisheries:

Marine Municipal Fisheries:

Inland Municipal Fisheries:

Overall Fish Production per Region

Top producers are coastal/island regions:

ARMM (Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao): ~35.98 M (19.1% of national total)
Region IX (Zamboanga Peninsula): ~25.32 M (13.4%)
Region IV-B (MIMAROPA): ~24.18 M (12.8%)
Region VI (Western Visayas): ~16.25 M (8.6%)
Region IV-A (CALABARZON): ~14.49 M (7.7%)

Together these five regions account for ≈62% of all production, reflecting their extensive coastlines, rich fishing grounds, and well-developed aquaculture.

Mid-tier contributors: Regions XII (SOCCSKSARGEN), III (Central Luzon), V (Bicol), VII (Central Visayas), and VIII (Eastern Visayas) each contribute between 3.6% and 7.0% of the total, with Region XII owing 39.53% of their total in commercial fishing (highest percentage from commercial fishing) and the other mid-tier contributors also boasting increased percentages from municipal fishing.

Minimal contributors:

CAR (Cordillera Administrative Region): 0.16 M (0.08%)
Region II (Cagayan Valley): 2.33 M (1.2%)
NCR (Metro Manila): 2.65 M (1.4%)

These regions lack significant marine access (CAR is entirely landlocked) or have undergone rapid urbanization (NCR), leaving little room for large-scale fisheries.

Interpretation

Concentration in the south and major island groups: Regions with extensive coastal waters (Mindanao, Visayas island groups, MIMAROPA) dominate fish output, both from marine capture fisheries and aquaculture.

Economic and infrastructural factors: The top regions have long-established fishing traditions, port facilities, and supportive aquaculture industries (pond culture, cages).

Resource and policy implications: Regions in the mid-tier contributors have room to increase their outputs, and thus could benefit from efforts on boosting production while also adopting sustainable practices to avoid overfishing further marine degradation. Landlocked areas will remain peripheral in fisheries unless inland aquaculture is significantly developed.

Equity and food-security angle: Given the heavy reliance on a handful of regions, diversifying production zones and improving infrastructure in underperforming coastal provinces could enhance resilience against localized shocks (e.g., typhoons, overfishing).

Team

Dale Sealtiel Flores

I am a 2nd year BS CS student from UP Diliman. I am currently in the process of finding what field of computer science I want to get into. I have somewhat dabbled in web development and data science.

Aaron Jori Baclor

I'm a Computer Science sophomore at UP Diliman. These days, I'm focusing more on myself and paying attention to the things that genuinely make me happy. I enjoy working on personal improvement—whether that's through gaming, basketball, or going to the gym.

I'm still figuring out which direction I want to take in tech, but I'm taking my time learning and exploring what clicks. For now, I'm just trying to stay consistent and enjoy the process.

Sebastian Lucian Reyes

ヾ(＾∇＾) I am a 2nd year comsci student, cybersecurity nerd, and an ever-wayward adventurer. Yours truly is a gamer, language learner/linguistics nerd, martial artist, gym bro, pianist, ROTC/COCC graduate, biker, swimmer, weeb, romantic, guy na palaging naka-shades, introvert-turned-extrovert, philosophy nerd, armchair geopolitical analyst, budding spiritualist, fragrance collector, aura farmer, and so so so much more!

Null Hypothesis (H0)

Alternative Hypothesis (H1)