Guimaras Strait is a strait in the Western Visayas region of the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

, connecting the Visayan Sea with Panay Gulf and the

Sulu Sea The Sulu Sea (; Tausug: ''Dagat sin Sūg''; ; ) is a body of water in the southwestern area of the Philippines, separated from the South China Sea in the northwest by Palawan and from the Celebes Sea in the southeast by the Sulu Archipela ...

beyond. To the north and west are Panay and Guimaras Islands, while Negros Island is to the south and east. Bacolod City is a major seaport on the strait, which also provides access to the Port of Iloilo City via the Iloilo Strait.

Marine species

The Guimaras Strait is an important fishing ground in the Philippines, having an average of annual fish production of 50,000 metric tons. The northern part is particularly known for blue crab, a top export commodity. Other species present in the strait include

barracuda A barracuda is a large, predatory, ray-finned, saltwater fish of the genus ''Sphyraena'', the only genus in the family Sphyraenidae, which was named by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. It is found in tropical and subtropical oceans worldw ...

, cavalla,

clam Clam is a common name for several kinds of bivalve mollusc. The word is often applied only to those that are deemed edible and live as infauna, spending most of their lives halfway buried in the sand of the sea floor or riverbeds. Clams h ...

s, cockles, crevalle,

dolphin A dolphin is an aquatic mammal in the cetacean clade Odontoceti (toothed whale). Dolphins belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontopori ...

, flounders, flying fish,

fusilier ''Fusilier'' is a name given to various kinds of soldiers; its meaning depends on the historical context. While ''fusilier'' is derived from the 17th-century French word – meaning a type of flintlock musket – the term has been used in cont ...

glassfish GlassFish is an open-source Jakarta EE platform application server project started by Sun Microsystems, then sponsored by Oracle Corporation, and now living at the Eclipse Foundation and supported by OmniFish, Fujitsu and Payara. The support ...

, goatfish, goby, grouper, jacks, jelly fish, lizard fish, marine turtle, milkfish, mojarra, moonfish,

moray Moray ( ; or ) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It lies in the north-east of the country, with a coastline on the Moray Firth, and borders the council areas of Aberdeenshire and Highland. Its council is based in Elgin, the area' ...

, mullets,

mussel Mussel () is the common name used for members of several families of bivalve molluscs, from saltwater and Freshwater bivalve, freshwater habitats. These groups have in common a shell whose outline is elongated and asymmetrical compared with other ...

s, scallops,

oyster Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but no ...

s, perchlet, scads, sea bass, sea catfish,

sea cucumber Sea cucumbers are echinoderms from the class (biology), class Holothuroidea ( ). They are benthic marine animals found on the sea floor worldwide, and the number of known holothuroid species worldwide is about 1,786, with the greatest number be ...

, sea perches,

sea urchin Sea urchins or urchins () are echinoderms in the class (biology), class Echinoidea. About 950 species live on the seabed, inhabiting all oceans and depth zones from the intertidal zone to deep seas of . They typically have a globular body cove ...

s, seaweeds,

shad The Alosidae, or the shads, are a family (biology), family of clupeiform fishes. The family currently comprises four genera worldwide, and about 32 species. The shads are Pelagic fish, pelagic (open water) schooling fish, of which many are anadr ...

s, sicklefish, siganids, sillago, slipmouth, snappers, spadefish,

sponge Sponges or sea sponges are primarily marine invertebrates of the animal phylum Porifera (; meaning 'pore bearer'), a basal clade and a sister taxon of the diploblasts. They are sessile filter feeders that are bound to the seabed, and a ...

s, surgeon fish, threadfin, and wrasses.

Environmental issues

The Guimaras oil spill, that occurred in Panay Gulf on August 11, 2006, has severely affected the fishing industry. During this spill, considered Philippines' worst, the oil tanker M/T ''Solar 1'' sank during a violent storm, spilling some of oil which formed an oil slick that drifted through the strait. This spill followed another one in December 2005, when a passenger ship ran aground in the strait. It spilled of fuel oil, polluting some of coastline and of virgin mangrove forests. Besides these oil spills, the ecosystems of the Guimaras Strait also suffer from rapid coastal development and

overfishing Overfishing is the removal of a species of fish (i.e. fishing) from a body of water at a rate greater than that the species can replenish its population naturally (i.e. the overexploitation of the fishery's existing Fish stocks, fish stock), resu ...

. Increased urban populations and transportation are causing

anthropogenic Anthropogenic ("human" + "generating") is an adjective that may refer to: * Anthropogeny, the study of the origins of humanity Anthropogenic may also refer to things that have been generated by humans, as follows: * Human impact on the enviro ...

pressures, while gillnet fishing has exceeded the maximum sustainable yield since 1999.

References

{{Authority control Straits of the Philippines Landforms of Guimaras Landforms of Negros Occidental Landforms of Iloilo