Residents gathering tiny shrimps at the Sipalay beach on Wednesday morning.* Screengrab from Donna Valdez video
Tiny shrimps (hipon) have turned the beach front in Sipalay City, Negros Occidental, into pink for four days now.
The tiny shrimps have blanketed about a half kilometer of the shoreline from Barangay 2 to 5 every morning since Sunday, with the largest amount seen on Wednesday, October 14, Dionilo Bogtae, coordinator of the Sipalay City Disaster Risk Reduction Management office, said.
He said more than a hundred residents carrying various containers were seen on the shoreline gathering the tiny shrimps.
The rint shrimps are brought in by the tide before dawn and are washed back into the sea when the high tide hits, Bogtae said.
Sipalay City is known for its white sand beaches so residents were surprised to see it turn pink.
Some said they were going to make ginamos (shrimp paste) out of the hipon they gathered.
There have also been hipon landings in Sipalay before but in smaller amounts, Bogtae said.
Bogtae said they had no actual scientific explanation for the shrimp landings.
Prevailing coastal winds pushing inland are said to generate surface currents that drift swarms of small, weak-swimming planktonic shrimp toward the shore and beach margins.
Rising high tides may also push deep-water plankton and small crustacean clusters into coastal inlets, estuaries, and shallow bays.*
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