Panguil Bay is an arm of Iligan Bay in Mindanao, Philippines. The bay forms the natural boundary separating the Zamboanga Peninsula from the rest of the island of Mindanao. It borders the provinces of Misamis Occidental, Zamboanga del Sur, and Lanao del Norte.
The Panguil Bay Bridge is a two-lane bridge connecting Tangub to Tubod. The bridge reduces the travel time between Tangub and Tubod from 2.5 hours to 7 minutes. The -billion construction project started in 2020 and was opened on September 27, 2024.
Geography
Panguil Bay is about long, and has an area of
There are 29 major and 46 minor river tributaries into the bay,
History
left|thumb|Fuerte de la Concepcion y del Triunfo
In the 1750s, the Fuerte de la Concepcion y del Triunfo in the town of Misamis, (now the modern city of Ozamiz) was built by the Spanish to guard the entrance to Panguil Bay. At that time Moro pirate raids were at their peak, and the bay was described as a "never ending source of Muslim pirates". In 1917, a lighthouse was built on the eastern bastion of the Spanish Fort.
Panguil Bay has suffered for decades from overfishing and destructive fishing practices. One of the biggest contributor of over-exploitation was the extensive use of filter nets, locally called sanggab. These nets trap all marine organisms, even macroplankton, depleting the food chain in the bay. Compared to 1984, the number of fish species dropped from 201 to 121 by the mid 1990s.
Further degradation resulted from destruction of natural habitats (such as mangroves turned into fishponds), pollution by poisonous chemicals, and increasing human development along the bay's shore. The sharp decline in fish catch prompted rehabilitation efforts that included the removal of illegal fishing structures such as the filter nets that numbered in the thousands in the 2010s.