DAGUPAN CITY - The city of Dagupan will soon be the center of aqua culture technology in the country with the opening sometime in early next year of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources’ JdV Asian Aquaculture Academy.

JDV, the initials of the name of Speaker Jose de Venecia, Jr., was attached because it was he who provided the P30 million spent for the construction of the academy’s initial two-storey building inside the 24-hectare National Integrated Fisheries Technology Development Center.

Beside Speaker de Venecia is NIFTDC’s number one patron, having earlier funded the establishment there of the National Bangus Research Center that seeks to make the Philippines self-sufficient in bangus fry in a few years.

Dr. Westly Rosario, interim director of the National Fisheries Research Technology Development Institute and concurrent NIFTD chief, said the building is now complete, except its furnishings.

He said the National Agriculture and Fisheries Council (NAFC) has pledged to provide P15 million to be used in funding the needed furnishing of the academy and partly to bankroll training of fishermen, and technicians of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), Technical Education Skills Development Authority 9TESDA), local government units and fishery schools.

Aside from this, the academy will conduct international training once a year on the latest advances in aquaculture which the Philippines would like to share with its Asian neighbors.

The NIFTDC was visited early this year by President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea, the first foreign head of state to do so, were he expressed interest to send students from his country to study aquaculture especially the culture of bangus.

Rosario sid the training design for Equatorial Guinea students is now being prepared by the BFAR. (PNA)