|
My
initiation to
Tubbataha
Reefs Natural Park
started with a back-roll, one day in May, into Jessie
Beazley Reef. The first sharks of the trip were close
enough to make out the white on their tips. Grey reef
sharks were on active patrol, too, and we spotted no
less than three pregnant sharks, bulging at their sides.
Next
day, over at North Tubbataha, Shark Airport lived up to
its name. By now, giant Napoleon wrasses and circling
jacks were a more interesting sight than staple sharks.
Six-foot teeth-baring tunas startled me more than the
dozing eight-foot nurse shark. A breathtaking tower of
circling chevron barracudas (at mere arm’s length at one
point) capped the last dive before twilight. Two hours
later, my night dive was blessed with eight turtles.
This is
the Tubbataha I know—its horizon viewed from a boat
deck, depths peered through a dive mask. It’s a wild
place that I dream of returning to.
But
Tubbataha is much more than that.
For park
manager Angelique M. Songco, it’s all of 96,828 hectares (10,000 of which are coral reefs)—and every bit of it needs guarding.
Apart from Jessie Beazley Reef and the surrounding
waters, there’s also the uninhabited South Atoll and
North Atoll. Tubbataha is a no-take Marine Protected
Area (MPA) located in the middle of the Cagayan Ridge in
the
Sulu
Sea. And it falls under the political jurisdiction of
the
municipality
of Cagayancillo, which lies 60 nautical miles to the
northeast.
WELCOME to an underwater
world of wonder
My
Tubbataha in May had calm seas and clear skies; Songco’s
is exposed to both northeast and southwest monsoons most
months of the year. She has the bigger picture:
Tubbataha hosts 379 coral species (almost 90 percent of
all coral species in the Philippines), 481 fish species,
seven species of resident breeding seabirds, 10 cetacean
species, 79 algae species, seven seagrass species, and
eight shark species. And its value to conservation and
the Philippine economy lies in its strategic role as a
source of fish and coral larvae, serving to enrich
fisheries in surrounding areas.
Conservation International-Philippines (CI-Philippines)
country director Romeo B. Trono has his own take on
Tubbataha. For him, it’s part of a priority marine
biodiversity corridor—the Cagayan Ridge—which, in turn,
is part of an even bigger Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape (SSS)
Project, which also covers Verde Passage, Balabac
Strait, and the “Trinational Sea Turtle Corridor” of
Turtle Islands, Sabah and East Kalimantan.
“This
park is the only purely marine Unesco World Heritage
Site in Southeast Asia,” Trono reminded. “Its inclusion
on the Ramsar List of Wetlands of International
Importance demonstrates its global role in the
conservation of congregating seabird species. And the
islets on the two large atolls where seabirds feed and
breed are the nesting grounds of sea turtles, too.”
Cost of
protection
Songco
pointed out that Tubbataha’s isolation saved it from
fishing pressure in the 1970s, when near-shore fisheries
in the Philippines were relatively productive.
“But by
the mid-1980s, fishers from various parts of the country
and Asia begun to harvest its marine resources, mostly
using destructive means,” she noted. “Tubbataha was
declared a national marine park in 1988 yet fishers
still entered it—even during bad weather to elude
detection and arrest. By 1989, coral cover in Tubbataha
had decreased by 52 percent compared to 1982 levels.”
Today,
the sole policymaking body for the park is the 17-member
multisectoral Tubbataha Protected Area Management Board
(TPAMB). Its executive arm, the Tubbataha Management
Office (TMO), is charged with the park’s day-to-day
administration.
Detailed
to the reefs all-year-round on three-month rotations
are seven marine park rangers—four from the Philippine
Navy, one from the Philippine Coast Guard, and two from
the TMO. They are housed at the ranger station, located
in a sand bar at the North Atoll.
According to Songco, through the help of various
supporting agencies, they now have a radar, two patrol
boats and a dinghy, radios, GPS, binoculars, bullhorns,
spotlights, camera and firearms. “World Wildlife
Fund-Philippines donated a patrol boat while
CI-Philippines contributed an outboard motor as well as
support for bird-banding work,” she cited.
A park
ranger’s Tubbataha is a wild place—in a different sense
of the word. He’s an engine-and-electronics
troubleshooter, a seaman and scuba diver all rolled into
one. Most of all, he’s a law enforcer. Used to fishers
claiming to have accidentally entered the park, he
boards their boats to verify illegal activity. Poaching
cases in 2006 alone tallied at 33.
The most
publicized case was of the Chinese poachers caught
red-handed with 800 live fish—including over 200
Napoleon wrasses—inside the park last December.
“Poachers do not care about sustainable fisheries,
conservation efforts, or MPA rules and boundaries,”
Trono said. “They care about the demands of the Chinese
aphrodisiac market. They care about making money from
sea turtles, shark meat, sea cucumbers and giant clams.”
They
care enough to get crafty at it. Trono gave an example:
“Illegal fishers who are after topshells [Trochus
niloticus], locally known as samong, arrive in the cover
of night. They shut off the motor of their outrigger
boats just outside park waters. They use paddle boats,
with their lights-off, to silently enter the park. They
stack the shells in certain areas as they go along.
Before sun-up, these are collected and loaded to the
motorized boat.”
Taking
samong—considered rare, threatened and endangered under
Convention of Internationally Trade Endangered
Species—or any other rare or endangered species is
punishable by a 12- to 20-year imprisonment or a
P120,000 fine, forfeiture of catch and fishing permit
cancellation.
But
these risks are taken anyway because businessmen in
Roxas town reportedly buy topshells for between P140 and
P160 a kilo to be sold at P400 a kilo in Cebu. Mainly
because rangers endure rough weather during stakeouts
and stakeholders outside the park report illegal
activity, they made some headway since 2006. Early this
year, for example, five people were caught carrying 16
boxes of 700 topshells.
“Considering the park’s law-enforcement budget of P8
million a year against its threefold increase in total
area to 96,828, the cost of protection is virtually P83
per hectare per year. That’s obviously not enough,”
Songco said.
Back to
the basics
CI-Philippines is a member of the TPAMB. It also engages
local stakeholders and collaborators for its SSS Project
in the Cagayan Ridge Marine Biodiversity Conservation
Corridor.
“We met
with stakeholders—from fishers and fish vendors to
teachers and priests—to draw their thoughts on
conservation, needs and expectations, and possibilities
for project participation,” said William Azucena,
CI-Philippines information, education and communication
specialist.
Stakeholders reported deployed MPA markers that had been
destroyed, the lack of MPA guard outposts, and fisheries
law-enforcement teams that needed organizing. They
identified areas for collaboration: from the strategic
(monitoring and improving local MPAs) to the
nitty-gritty (equipping the Bantay Dagat with radios,
searchlights, flashlights, raincoats, uniforms and
training).
To
contribute to the funds for park management and law
enforcement, the SSS Project determined a penalty of
P12,000 per square meter of damaged reef. Azucena
explained: “Production and restoration cost estimates
put the park’s coral reefs’ annual economic value at
about P208 to P211 per square meter.” The TPAMB has
since adopted this environmental-crimes fine.
Azucena
added: “We drill down to the basics for our basis. MPA
networks and corresponding management systems are
designed based on what we know about spawning fish
stocks within this corridor and their dispersal to
others. Test fishing [that monitor catch and by-catch],
meanwhile, helps assess the pressures to develop the
right policies.”
Big
network for a big project
The
inhabited islands along the Cagayan Ridge Corridor are
Cawili, Arena, Calusa and Cagayancillo. “In Cagayancillo,
6,000 residents gave up their homes in line with the
national decision to declare Tubbataha Reefs a no-take
zone,” Azucena noted, as tourism, research and
conservation are the only activities allowed within the
park. “Their attempt to understand why and what for
makes them conservation heroes. The challenge for us is
to address the question, ‘What’s in it for them?’”
Delivering on conservation outcomes, after all, is about
maximizing partnerships. For Cagayan Ridge,
CI-Philippines joined hands not only with the TMO, TPAMB
and Cagayancillo’s stakeholders and local government
unit but also with the UP Marine Science Institute and
Ocean Bio Laboratory, Tropical Marine Research for
Conservation, and the Pawikan Conservation Project of
the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau.
A big
project needs an even bigger community. “We’re inviting
oil and gas corporations, as part of their corporate
social responsibility programs, to participate in the
development of a conservation strategy for the Cagayan
Ridge Marine Biodiversity Conservation Corridor.
Together, we can demonstrate sustainable management of
protected areas adjacent to exploration areas,” Trono
reported.
CI has
already partnered with oil and gas companies—like BP,
Chevron, Shell and Statoil—before.
In
Venezuela, CI’s partnership activities included a marine
biodiversity survey of habitats near ConocoPhillips’
concession area as well as a threats-and-opportunities
assessment in the region, used to develop part of
ConocoPhillips’ Environmental Impact Assessment.
CI’s
Southampton-based Serpent project had been supported by
oil and gas facilities to pursue deep-sea species
surveys and research. A number of companies supported
research on whale migration. These types of research
help prioritize the deeper seascape areas for
conservation activities even as they address companies’
environmental risk needs and provide a relatively simple
and cost-effective outreach mechanism.
Here at
home, First Gen provided over $150,000 to support the
development and implementation of a conservation plan
for Verde Island.
Dive
operators and tourists play their part, too.
The
third day found us at Black Rock,
South Tubbataha, where I watched a marble ray gliding deeper, an
octopus changing colors and textures as it moved, a
wrass cleaning the cheek of a green moray, and a sea
snake undulating across the sandy bottom.
The last
four dives on Day Four at Delsan Wreck were devoted to
searching for a manta. It showed itself on the very last
dive—sealing it, in my mind, as an official Tubbataha
trip.
But one
other distinctive thing happened, too: Our dive operator
reported the presence of a suspicious-looking vessel. As
I watched the rangers’ patrol boat approach, I felt part
of the big scheme to protect what we love. |
