Filipinos are inveterate fishermen. Most of them live at water’s edge, and therefore naturally depend on the sea and its foreshore as a source of food. Over the centuries, techniques for achieving success in catching fish have evolved, producing some interesting modalities. One of them is the Paijao (pronounced pie-yaow).

The immensity of the ocean is unfathomable (pun intended). If you apply the marine population density to the area of New York City, there would barely be a single person in the whole city. So how do marine animals survive? Usually by producing millions of offspring, so that at least a few can achieve maturity. That is, after one finds a mate. Sheer luck is a huge factor. Another characteristic of the ocean is that most of its inhabitants die an unnatural death. Perhaps it is actually a natural way of life and death in the ocean – to be born, and eventually eaten by some larger animal. To put it another way, life and death in the ocean is characterized by violence. Sound familiar?

So if you go out into the emptiness of blue (deep) water, which is so sparsely populated, you can create a mini-marine community by creating a shelter for the smallest of marine critters that are drifting with the currents, passing through the vast emptiness of the blue ocean. If something is floating in the water, and its size is sufficient to produce a refuge for small animals to take shelter in, they certainly will assemble there, taking shelter. The first occupants of this shelter system are very tiny juvenile creatures, some of them unlike anything seen by humans. Larvae of various ocean species, small shrimps, fry, and other critters barely visible to the naked eye. Naturally, they feed on each other. The big ones have the advantage, and the food chain starts to form. There are new arrivals of all sorts of species, and as the occupants naturally get larger and larger until they are visible to the naked eye, a small eco-system evolves. The highly developed ecosystem in the Sargasso Sea of the Atlantic is perhaps the most famous for this phenomenon.

Eventually, as the eco-system matures, the occupants graduate to the larger pelagic predators. Jacks, mackerel, bill fish (marlin, sword fish) and eventually, sharks. A fully mature paijao will constitute a significant marine community of fishes. Then, the ultimate predator arrives on the scene – the human.

The Filipino fishermen create the conditions to allow this to happen. They anchor a buoy in deep water (about 800-1000 feet deep) and on the anchor line attach a bundle of palm fronds so that it stays about 20 feet (6 meters) below the surface. The stage is set.

To speed up the process, light boats can be used, anchored to the paijao mooring buoy, set up at sunset. Bright lamps powered by a small electric generator, attract fishes to the area, and after a few hours, the paijao is a beehive of fishy activity.

Then the fishermen can come in with hand lines and pick off the fish. Net boats are sometimes used, but it is pretty tricky to deploy a purse seine at a Paijao. I have seen it done, and can tell you that it requires a lot of teamwork in the dead of night, that is when well executed, is a sight to behold. But that is another story….

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