Professors from Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University (COMU), a state university in Turkey, visited UP Visayas (UPV) from March 23-30, 2025, to explore avenues for future collaborations, particularly in the field of fisheries and marine sciences.
Prof. Encarnacion Emilia S. Yap, UPV Vice Chancellor for Research and Extension, and Prof. Dr. Harold M. Monteclaro, Dean of the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences (CFOS), hosted Prof. Dr. Umur Önal and Prof. Dr. Muhammet Türkoğlo for a weeklong engagement.
The visit is part of a project between UPV and COMU under the Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility program for the exchange of faculty members and students.
Chancellor Clement C. Camposano welcomed the visitors when they paid a courtesy call to discuss strengthened collaborations between the two higher educational institutions.
Monteclaro and Yap led a round table discussion with the Turkish professors and selected CFOS faculty members and researchers for potential academic and research cooperation, as well as researcher and student mobility through the Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility project, a program that provides higher education students learning opportunities in another country.
Moreover, Önal and Türkoğlo, faculty members of Marine Sciences and Technology, COMU, shared insights of their research studies in Turkey through a series of lectures on March 27~28, 2025, at the AV Hall, CFOS, UPV, Miagao campus. The two-day activity was attended by the CFOS faculty members, researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students.
The lectures included the following topics: 1) A Review of the Turkish Aquaculture Sector, 2) Hydrography and Phytoplankton Dynamics of the Turkish Strait System, 3) Marine Fish Larvae Culture, 4) Marine Fish Larvae Feeding and Development, and 5) Seabream and Sea Bass Hatcheries.
The Turkish professors explored the UPV and CFOS facilities, including the UPV Museum and Galleries at the Iloilo City campus, the UPV Regional Research Center, Philippine Genome Center-Visayas, CFOS wet and dry laboratories and multi-species hatchery complex, the planktoniche and fish processing laboratories at the UPV Miagao campus, and the Brackishwater Aquaculture Center in Leganes, Iloilo.
Part of their learning tours was a visit to an aqua farm, the Iloilo Sunset Boulevard, and the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center-Aquaculture Department (SEAFDEC-AQD) in Tigbauan, Iloilo.
On January 31, 2022, UPV and COMU inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for academic and cultural ties through joint research activities and exchange of faculty members, researchers, and students. Yap, the former CFOS dean, was a witness to the agreement.
This collaboration was part of a bilateral program initiated by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) for fisheries and marine sciences known as “Development and Academic and Exchange Programs among Universities in the Philippines and Turkey.”
UPV is one of the Philippine higher educational institutions participating in this Philippine-Turkey project, with CFOS as the implementing unit.
