PALO, Leyte — The water has calmed down and low tide is setting in as 20-year-old Rey Agudo paddles back to the shore before it darkens hoping there would still be buyers for his half-a-pail catch on a late Saturday afternoon.

Every weekend, Agudo would borrow his father’s non-motorized fishing boat to fish on the waters of Carigara Bay for his allowance for the week, just enough for his expenses in a state college where he is enrolled as an education student.

But Agudo is getting frantic whether he will be able to finish schooling with his meager income from fishing. His fear, Carigara Bay where he gets his catch may soon be open to mining activity in the future.

“I read in social media that Carigara Bay has been opened for new mining application. Are there minerals here? Nobody cared to inform us about government plans in this area,” he says.

The Mines and Geosciences Bureau regional office in Eastern Visayas confirmed that it indeed announced last January that it is receiving applications for mining in three areas in Leyte after it canceled earlier mining applications covering the same areas.

These areas are 13,139 hectares in the municipalities of Babatngon, Barugo, Carigara and Capooocan applied by Grand Total Exploration and Mining Corp. last 18 March 2010; 5,309 hectares in the towns of Palo and Tanauan and Tacloban City applied by Rushfield Mining Company in 19 December 2005; and 3,022 hectares in Dulag by Mt. Magan Resources and Development Corp. last 22 April 2010.

MGB regional director Glenn Marcelo Noble said the three mining applications were canceled last 7 January 2025 due to failure of the applicants to submit the necessary requirements which include a consent of the local government unit.

Based on the coordinates provided by MGB, all these areas were found to be in Leyte Gulf in the eastern seaboard of the province and Carigara Bay on the north.

Noble said this is not the first offshore mining application in Leyte — one application covers the municipal water of Macarthur town but the applicant has stopped working on it after their equipment that were supposed to be used in the exploration were destroyed by typhoon “Yolanda” in November 2013.

Noble said the eastern seaboard of Leyte is known for its rich deposit of magnetite, a mineral used in the production of steel. It also finds applications in various magnetic devices, water treatment, and as a pigment.