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1. Fry gatherer: An individual, usually working as part of a small team, who captures fry along the coastline with various nets and traps.
2. Concessionaire: That individual, partnership, corporation, or co-operative designated by a coastal municipality, usually after competitive bidding, as having exclusive rights to exploit a given fry ground.
3. Dealer: An individual, partnership, or corporation (other than a concessionaire) engaged in buying and selling of fry, or in buying and selling of market-size milkfish. While taking title to the commodity, primary functions of dealers are storage and transport, not transformation from fry to fingerlings. Dealers of market-size milkfish are either wholesalers or retailers, and sell to either domestic or export markets.
4. Commissionman: A buyer's or a seller's representative, who does not take title to fry, fingerlings, or market-size milkfish in his own name, but in the name of the person he represents, and is paid a commission based on the volume of the purchase or sale.
5. Broker: A facilitator of fry, fingerling, or market-size fish exchanges between buyers and sellers, who does not take title to the commodity in his own name. Brokers are of two types, based on the means of payment. The first type acts as broker for the seller, stores the fry or market size fish until a buyer is found, and charges either a flat fee, or more likely, a percentage commission (usually 5 per cent) based on the selling price. The second type, common only in the fry procurement sub-system, represents neither buyer nor seller but arranges the exchange between the two, and has a return based on the spread that can be created between the selling price and the buying price.
6. Runner: A smuggler of fry from fry grounds, who acts as a dealer or as commission man. Frequently, a runner is financed by a particular buyer for whom he is smuggling.
7. Nursery-pond operator: One who specializes in raising fry to fingerling size for sale to fishpond or fishpen operators.
8. Fishpond operator: One who raises either fry, fingerlings, or a combination of both to market size in a pond.
9. Fishpen operator: One who raises fingerlings to market size in a fixed bamboo net enclosure rather than in a pond.
10. Consumer: One who purchases market-size milkfish for consumption purposes.
As in any large scale business activity, functionaries in the milkfish resource system cannot always be as clearly delineated as the above categories imply. Fry gatherers occasionally double as runners. Nursery-pond operators and even commission men also serve as dealers and brokers. However, the broad distinctions among functionaries are necessary to establish the production and marketing chain and the role within it played by each functionary.