Determination of a Correlation Between Water Quality and Volume of Fisheries Production in Laguna de Bay

• Main Authors: Austria, Kathleen Joyce C., Bustos, Angelica Janell D., Liza, Andrei Ricardo O.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 2022
• Subjects: freshwater fish, water quality, Laguna Lake, fecal coliform, fish production
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/conf_shsrescon/2022/paper_see/8; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1083&context=conf_shsrescon
• Institution: De La Salle University

With the series of fish kills experienced by Laguna Lake in recent years, it is vital to understand which specific factors caused these events. According to the Laguna Lake and Development Authority (LLDA), these were mainly due to the increased nitrate levels and decreased dissolved oxygen (DO) levels in the lake, which are indicators of lake water quality degradation. This study aimed to determine the relationship between different water quality parameters and the volume of freshwater fish production in Laguna from 2016 to 2019. The study examined seven water quality parameters namely, ammonia, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), DO, fecal coliform, inorganic phosphate, nitrate, and pH, and their correlation with the fish production volume. Results however showed that only fecal coliform has a strong correlation with fish volume (r=-0.9488). Nitrate and DO, on the other hand, displayed moderately strong correlations (r=-0.5735; r=-0.4161), while other parameters were insignificant. This suggests that aside from the usual water quality parameters analyzed, fecal coliform concentration may also be a crucial indicator of lake degradation and possibly affect fish production.