Posted on August 25, 2025
TUGUEGARAO CITY, Cagayan, Philippines – Edison Palattao, a 52-year-old fisherman in Aparri, Cagayan, still can’t move on from how the extraction of river sand made their lives miserable.
“It really made our lives worse,” he recalled as he blamed the extraction of sand from the Cagayan River as the reason behind the serious decline in fish and aramang catch.
Palattao told INQUIRER.net that back when there were no dredging activities in Barangay Punta, small shrimps or aramang have always been abundant in the area where the river and sea converge.
“Overnight, we were bringing home 60 to 80 cans, but when the sand extraction started, our catch dropped to five to 10 cans,” he said. “They were disturbed by the dredging.”

EDISON PALATTAO recalls how the presence of a dredging vessel at the end of Cagayan River impacted “indigent fishing,” which is their main source of livelihood.
Even swordfishes, which they call espada or bulong unas, became scarce, with Palattao pointing out how their catch declined from 60 to 80 kilos to only 10 to 15 kilos.
Based on data from Grupo Mangngalap, where Palattao is the president, fishermen’s income from an overnight sail dropped to P300 to P400, which is way lower than the P1,000 that they were bringing home before the dredging started.

LOCAL FISH PRODUCTS that provide income to residents are arranged for sale at a makeshift stall in Brgy. Punta in Aparri, Cagayan, where the dredging of river sand took place in 2019.
“We are still recovering now,” he said, stating that since 2023, the year when the sand extraction stopped, the river, as well as the sea, are now returning to how they were.
But only two years since the people, led by Grupo Mangngalap and the local church succeeded in their campaign for an end to the dredging of sand from the Cagayan River, Palattao and his community are again living in dread.
“We are worried that we will experience what happened to us a few years ago,” he said while stating that in the first week of August, they were called for a consultation on proposed dredging activities.
Mineral wealth
Cagayan, located at the tip of northern Luzon, has several coastal towns, including Aparri, where the 520-kilometer long Cagayan River literally meets the sea.
The local government said the province has immense deposits of both metallic and non-metallic mineral resources such as magnetite, which can be extracted from black sand.
Across the country, there are 1.56 billion metric tons of minerals that are believed to contain 5.7 to 64.4 percent of magnetite, which is critical in steel production, based on the government’s data on metallic resources and reserves.
With data on proposed extraction rate, Cagayan has over 512 million metric tons of minerals that contain magnetite, with Aparri being one of the few municipalities that are rich in black sand.
As residents said, this is why they opposed the extraction of sand from the Cagayan River even before it started in 2019, with 62-year-old Yolanda Culcul stating that the dredged sand was being brought to China.
“If the extracted sand is not taken away, we will have no apprehension. However, we know that the sand extraction, which they say is for flood-control, is mining,” she told INQUIRER.net.
Never new
Culcul, who has been in the village all her life said “I can’t be fooled,” pointing out that way before the dredging started, which was initiated by the provincial government supposedly to mitigate flooding, she already saw “mining in several forms.”
As stated by the Social Action Ministry of the Parokia San Telmo, large vessels started arriving in Cagayan River in 2008, claiming that the town of Lal-lo endorsed sand extraction purportedly to solve the problem of flooding.
While documents revealed that they were only approved to take commercial sand and gravel, they processed sand materials by bringing in magnetic separators. “We knew by then that it was not dredging but magnetite or black sand mining,” it said.
A year later, the mining of black sand expanded to include Aparri. Buguey, Gonzaga, and Sanchez Mira. Residents succeeded in opposing previous mining proposals, but most activities persisted.
Then in 2019, the provincial government endorsed the dredging of Cagayan River to remove silt, sand, and other sediments, saying that it is not mining and that the sand materials will not be processed.
But what residents saw was the contrary, so they were convinced that the extraction of sand for “flood-control” was nothing but a cover for the mining of black sand.
Shipped to China?
No official would confirm the shipments to China but in interviews conducted by INQUIRER.net, residents said the individuals dredging river sand, even those working in earlier mining activities, were Chinese.
Last week, Aug. 14, at the House of Representatives, Surigao del Norte Rep. Ace Barbers said Chinese-led dredging activities in the Philippines should be investigated.
Since 2019, the “free” extraction of sand for the Cagayan River Restoration Project has been carried out by six companies, which Makabayan representatives claimed to have Chinese links.
Rich in natural resources, the Philippines is at the receiving end of China’s aggression, not only in the West Philippine Sea, but also where mining is pervasive.
A 2011 report by Pacific Strategies and Assessments said the Philippines had seen a spike in Chinese mining activities, with the Asia Sentinel saying that some are exporting minerals “out through porous coastal ports.”
Based on data from the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, out of the 298 existing Mineral Production Sharing Agreements (MPSA), eight are in Cagayan, covering 50,505 hectares.
New threat
One of the companies that have an MPSA is set to expand its large-scale offshore mining in 1,902 hectares in Gonzaga to include 3,096 hectares in Aparri and Buguey.
This is what residents are worried about, as well as the construction of the Port of Aparri, which some believe will again have an impact on the livelihood of thousands of fishermen, especially in Barangay Punta.
“We are not against development, especially if it will make Aparri better,” Palattao said. However, he stressed that they should not be left out. “We were miserable in the last few years.”
Based on a public document, the Cagayan Offshore Magnetite Mining Project is expected to have a production rate of 1.3 million metric tons (MT), but in a new proposal, extraction will be increased to 30 million MT every year.
Palattao said it is not yet clear if this is already the “proposal” that was tackled in the consultation, considering that the idea of dredging of Cagayan River to mitigate flooding has not yet died down.
But one thing is certain now, he said. “Mining, dredging, or whatever they call it, is something that we are really concerned about. We do not want to experience what we had a few years ago.”