Smoke blankets the room where Emma Ganila has been scooping brine into an assembly line of tin cans. As salt water boils and evaporates in the tins, blocks of white salt form. Emma has been making Tultul, an artisanal salt only found on Guimaras island.

On Iloilo, an island right across Emma’s, Lorlie Noblezada watches her son, John, face strong breaking waves as he collects seawater with a bamboo pole to start the process of making Budbud salt.

Emma and Lorlie are some of the last artisanal saltmakers in the Philippines. Both have been safekeeping traditional saltmaking processes for decades. However, this craft is in fast decline.

Despite a long history of saltmaking, the Philippines, an archipelago with the fifth-longest coastline in the world, has not produced enough salt for its own needs for the past 15 years. The country has some of the rarest salts in the world, including Tultul and Budbud, and it only needs to ultilise six percent of its coastline to be self-sufficient in salt. But local salts are on the brink of extinction due to unsupportive policies, industry neglect, and climate change.

The process of making artisanal salt is time-consuming and laborious, but still, Emma, at 74, spends her day inside the warm and smoky production house to cook blocks of Tultul salt; Lorlie assesses the seasons and checks if the skies are clear to schedule production of Budbud salt. For these matriarchs, this craft, as much as it is a livelihood, is what binds their families’ day-to-day living.

All life depends on salt.