Saltwater contamination or salinization is among these problems. High salinity was confirmed in soil sampled from the DRDC farm. Paez said it was never the practice of his firm to wash out muck as was the practice in the Visayas. What it does, Paez said, is dry the ponds, scrape the muck, sun-dry this and backfill to prevent shrimp infection from bacteria. But fishermen, like Moises Saludo, argued that muck had been thrown into the bay, citing the corals covered with muck.
Small slops fall along the coast when the muck is transported to a drying area near the villages.
Stench remains in the villages for weeks when the muck is dried, villagers said. Paez did not identify the firm's dumping site for the overused muck, produced in intensive ponds at the rate of 20 to 200 tons dry weight per hectare per cropping, industry reports showed. In the early 1970s, Saludo was able to catch 30 to 40 kilos daily without straying away one kilometer from the coast. Since DRDC's operations, he said his catch steadily diminished, last year, averaging only three kilos and at higher production costs. Saludo ruled out overfishing even when the number of fishermen rose from three in the 1970s to more than 50 in 1999.