Philippines closes Palawan round scad season for three months
Round scad fishing in northern Palawan closed on 1 November and will not reopen until 31 January. The Mimaropa regional office of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources announced the three-month shutdown on 27 October, and it takes one of the country's main galunggong grounds out of production for the whole Q4 demand window.
The closure is not a surprise. It is annual, and it is aimed at spawning. But it lands in the same quarter when Philippine buyers build stock for Christmas and the January price ceiling, which makes the frozen import side of the trade worth pricing now rather than in December.
The Numbers
Under the closed season, purse seines, ring nets and bag nets are prohibited inside the designated conservation area in the northeastern part of Palawan from 1 November to 31 January, according to BFAR-Mimaropa as reported by The Philippine Star. The agency's stated purpose is to let round scad grow and reproduce.
The import base this closure sits on is large and flat. The Philippines imported USD 687 million of frozen, dried and smoked fish in the 12 months to September 2025, down 0.1% year on year, and exported USD 111 million over the same period, according to IndexBox trade data. The import unit price for the category was USD 2,044 per tonne in June 2026.
The demand signal in the most recent month runs the other way. Philippine imports rose 25.7% year on year in September 2026 to a record USD 15.03 billion, driven by electronics and fuel, while imports of other food and live animals fell 14.7%, according to Philippine Statistics Authority data reported by Trading Economics.
What It Means for Buyers
Galunggong functions as the reference price for cheap animal protein in the Philippines. When the Palawan grounds close, the fish that would have reached Metro Manila markets in December comes from elsewhere: other domestic grounds, cold stores, and imports. Frozen round scad from China, Vietnam and Indonesia is the direct substitute, and it is the specification most Philippine distributors already carry.
The interesting tension this year is that the volume may not follow the price. Total imports are surging, but the food and live animals line fell nearly 15% in September, which points to affordability pressure rather than a sudden appetite for imported protein. A closed season that tightens domestic supply does not automatically convert into container volume if the peso and retail prices are pushing consumers toward cheaper substitutes, including chicken and canned goods.
The practical read, and this is judgement rather than forecast: Philippine buyers who normally wait until mid-December to cover the January gap have less reason to wait this year. Cold store stocks built before November are cheaper than cargo booked against a rising spot market in December, and vessel space into Manila in the second half of December is always the constraint nobody budgets for.
One more thing worth pricing in. Frozen round scad is a commodity with a wide quality spread, and the grade that clears at wholesale in Divisoria is not the grade that clears in a modern retail pack. Buyers substituting imported scad for fresh galunggong during the closure should fix the size band and the glaze percentage in writing, because a two-point difference in glaze is a five percent difference in usable meat.
What to Watch
The Department of Agriculture's Bantay Presyo monitoring for galunggong through December, which is the fastest public read on whether the domestic gap is being felt at retail.
Whether BFAR extends the gear restriction or adds areas, since Palawan closures have historically been adjusted between seasons.
Philippine cold storage inventory reports for the fourth quarter, which will show whether importers pre-booked or are running hand to mouth.
The peso, because a weaker currency changes the maths on imported scad faster than any landing figure does.
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This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI and is published for general information only. It does not constitute trading, pricing, or investment advice, and readers should verify all figures against the original sources linked above before making commercial decisions. Content on this page is partly AI-generated. Easy Seafood makes no warranty as to its accuracy or completeness.
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