The fisheries of sea and rivers are most abundant, and include all kinds of fish; both of fresh and salt water.  These are generally used as food throughout the entire country.  There are many good sardines, sea-eels, sea-breams (which they call bacocos), daces, skates, bicudas, tanguingues, soles, plantanos, [89] taraquitos, needle-fish, gilt-heads, and eels; large oysters, mussels, [90] porcebes, crawfish, shrimp, sea-spiders, center-fish, and all kinds of cockles, shad, white fish, and in the Tajo River of Cagayan, [91] during their season, a great number of bobos, which come down to spawn at the bar.  In the lake of Bonbon, a quantity of tunny-fish, not so large as those of Espana, but of the same shape, flesh, and taste, are caught.  Many sea-fish are found in the sea, such as whales, sharks, caellas, marajos, bufeos, and other unknown species of extraordinary forms and size.  In the year of five hundred and ninety-six, during a furious storm in the islands, a fish was flung into shallow water on one of the Luzon coasts near the province of Camarines.  It was so huge and misshapen, that although it lay in more than three and one-half bracas of water, it could not again get afloat, and died there.  The natives said that they had never seen anything like it, nor another shaped like it.  Its head was of wonderful size and fierce aspect.  On its frontal it bore two horns, which pointed toward its back.  One of them was taken to Manila.  It was covered with its skin or hide, but had no hair or scales.  It was white, and twenty feet long.  Where it joined the head it was as thick as the thigh, and gradually tapered proportionally to the tip.  It was somewhat curved and not very round; and to all appearances, quite solid.  It caused great wonder in all beholders. [92]

There is a fresh-water lake in the island of Luzon, five leguas from Manila, which contains a quantity of fish.  Many rivers flow into this lake, and it empties into the sea through the river flowing from it to Manila.  It is called La Laguna de Bay ["Bay Lake"].  It is thirty leguas in circumference, and has an uninhabited island in its middle, where game abounds. [93] Its shores are lined with many native villages.  The natives navigate the lake, and commonly cross it in their skiffs.  At times it is quite stormy and dangerous to navigate, when the north winds blow, for these winds make it very boisterous, although it is very deep.

Twenty leguas from Manila, in the province of Bonbon, is another lake of the same name [Bonbon], not so extensive as the former, but with a great abundance of fish.  The natives’ method of catching them is by making corrals [94] of bejucos, which are certain slender canes or rushes, solid and very pliant and strong; these are employed for making cables for the natives’ boats, as well as other kinds of ropes.  They catch the fish inside these corrals, having made the enclosures fast by means of stakes.