TANAUAN, LEYTE, PHILIPPINES (AP) – The Philippines, a nation made up of thousands of islands, is home to about 1.6 million people who work in fisheries, and the majority of those fishers are small-scale harvesters who collectively catch almost half of the nation’s fish.

Years of market pressures, lack of fisheries management and unchecked overfishing from larger commercial fishers have led to a decline in small fish such as sardines that rural coastal communities in the country of about 110 million people depend on. Data is not available on the state of many fish stocks, but the conservation group Oceana has said more than 75 per cent of the nation’s fishing grounds are depleted.

The problem of overfishing is especially detrimental to the country’s poorest people, many of whom earn their livings by fishing, said an anti-poverty activist Ruperto Aleroza who has spent decades harvesting small fish like sardines and round scad from the waters around the archipelago.

The small fish are important to the diet in parts of the Philippines where other sources of protein are not available, he said.

The fish are used in traditional dishes such as kinilaw, a raw fish dish similar to ceviche.

“We fisherfolk are the second to the poorest in our country” behind only farmers, Aleroza said.

The challenge overfishing poses to people who earn their living from the sea and who count on fish for protein in their diet is being experienced throughout the world.

As overfishing is impacting kinilaw in the Philippines, it’s effecting traditional dishes and ways of life in places such as the Bahamas, where scientists and government officials worry the commercial fishing of conch, a marine snail central to the diet and identify of the island nation, may soon no longer be feasible. And in Senegal, overfishing has largely wiped out white grouper, long the basis for the national dish of thieboudienne.

Aleroza blames years of poor fishing management and unsustainable fishing practices for taking away both a way of life and a key source of protein for some of his nation’s poorest people.

“It is threatening the local food source. We can’t feed our family. And it’s worsening poverty of artisanal fishers,” he said. “The overfishing worsens economic depression among us.”

Recently, the country has begun to make strides in rebuilding fisheries with spawning closures, said a scientist with the Philippine Department of Agriculture’s National Fisheries Research and Development Institute Mudjekeewis Santos.

“And the communities are happy that happened, because their catch increased,” he said.

“Fish don’t care about jurisdiction, and they’re being decimated.”

But there is much work left to be done, Santos said.

Non-governmental organisations such as the Environmental Defence Fund (EDF) are working with the Philippine government to adopt science-based, sustainable fishing practices, said Edwina Garchitorena, who leads those efforts for EDF in the country.

The problem goes beyond small fish. The loss of small, ocean-going fish such as anchovies is also devastating for larger fish, which eat the small fish, she said.

Garchitorena and others blame the over-exploitation of larger fish species to meet international demand, which she said increases fishing pressure on the smaller fish stocks that live closer to the coast.

“We’ve systematically reduced every type of fish in the ocean,” she said.

NEW YORK (AFP) – Like many people in his generation, Vijay Damerla finds most of his new music online – but the 20-year-old is slowly becoming a vinyl junkie, amassing records in his room.

The student said he doesn’t even own a turntable, saying for him “it’s the equivalent of like getting an artist poster, or like even an album poster on your wall”.

“Except, like, there’s actually kind of a little bit of a relic from the past.”

For Celine Court, 29, collecting vinyl – she said she owns some 250 records – is about the nostalgic, warm sound that many listeners said digital copies chill.

“If you listen to music on vinyl, it’s so different,” she told AFP as she perused the stacks at New York’s Village Revival Records. “It has like this authentic kind of feeling to it.”

Vinyl’s popularity has grown steadily in recent years, a reversal after CDs and digital downloads reigned over the 1990s and early 2000s.

The latest report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said that in 2022 more record units were sold than compact discs for the first time in three decades, with consumers snagging 41 million pieces of new vinyl last year compared to 33 million CDs.

Revenue from vinyl had already started surpassing CDs as of the 2020 report.

Big-box retailers including Walmart have embraced the retro format, and megastars including Taylor Swift, Harry Styles and Billie Eilish have sent pressing plants into overdrive.

Just this week Metallica purchased a plant to keep up with demand for their own reissues.maller shops are also feeding interest: Jamal Alnasr, who owns Village Revival, stocks some 200,000 records at any given time, not to mention used CDs, cassettes and memorabilia.

“Who would imagine vinyls will come back to life?” said the 50-year-old shop owner, who moved to New York from the West Bank in his late teens.

At one point he had even donated much of his own personal collection, which he estimates could be worth some USD200,000 these days, to an archiving institution, “In the nineties, if you talk about vinyl, I don’t think you’re cool.”

But decades later he says “every day I see (this) young generation buying new items.”
“I’ve been doing this for like 30 years… a new generation, kids, they come in look for all the music from the 1930s and 40s and 50s.”

“They actually know more than us, we who grew up in the 1990s and 80s,” he laughed.

“It’s a beautiful thing.”

Alnasr deals in both new and used vinyl – the RIAA report refers to reported sales of new pressings, which the shop owner does stock; he estimates the store contains about half new, half used items.

He said that because vinyl is relatively expensive to manufacture and distribute, the markup these days on new items can be as little as five percent, and he relies on original collectibles to make up the difference.

Alnasr said his business is riven by a combination of music nerds and more casual listeners, and with a USD15,000 monthly rent – once a bohemian haunt, today’s Greenwich Village is among the city’s priciest neighbourhoods – he’s mostly operating on the margins.

“Every time I’m about to sink I just take everything I’ve got personally and put it back into the business,” he laughed. “I guess… I love my business more than I love myself.”

Echoing student Damerla’s experience, Alnasr said many people buy records for the art – and discover the music later.

He’s fine with that, but does insist that most of his sales be conducted in person.

For a known customer – Alnasr is a favorite record dealer among celebrities, having befriended the likes of Lana Del Rey, Bella Hadid and Rosalia – he’s willing to procure and ship an item.

But for the most part, he prefers people “physically experience” the vinyl.

“You can say I’m the only stubborn New Yorker – I do not want to sell this format online,” he laughed. “I want people to come here… dig through vinyls and get educated.

“They will see way much more than the front one, there is a lot of hidden gems in here.”

No matter the vinyl revival, sales of physical music media remain niche, with streaming remaining the dominant listening format.

Services including paid subscriptions and ad-supported platforms grew seven per cent to reach a record high USD13.3 billion in revenue in 2022, according to the RIAA, accounting for 84 per cent of total United States (US) profits.

But Court, who is from the Netherlands, called streaming “too fast, too easy”.

“It’s just a better energy to collect your vinyl and then listen to it and be proud of it.”