UNDER VERDE’S SPELL

The Verde Island Passage is known as the epicenter of global marine biodiversity. But it is also the world’s most vulnerable.

By Lu-Ann G. Fuentes
Special to BusinessMirror

With a back roll, our world was transformed as we descended into Verde Island’s waters.
           
Trevallies (talakitok), fusiliers (dalagang bukid), groupers (lapu-lapu) and snappers (manutsot) at Pulong Bato showed with crystal-clear splendor how protected sites could help enhance fish stock. A banded sea snake glided along the coral bottom searching for burrowed gobies, while waves of fairy basslets—which thrive best in clear water and running current—colonized upper slopes adorned with reddish sea fans. A hawksbill turtle—listed as endangered—swam by, suggesting the recovery of their habitat and promising even better return-dives.
           
This was an unusual gathering of divers, which included First Gen Corp. president and chief operating officer Federico R. Lopez, Conservation International-Philippines (CI-Philippines) country director Romeo B. Trono, First Philippine Conservation Inc. (FPCI) executive director Atty. Rodolfo Ferdinand N. Quicho Jr., and World Conservation Union global marine species assessment coordinator Kent E. Carpenter.
           
And Verde Island’s waters, pinpointed by Carpenter as the extreme center of global marine biodiversity, warranted this special attention and alliance.
           
That weekend’s dive sites—the marine protected areas (MPAs) of Pulong Bato in San Agapito and Nalayag in San Agustin Kanluran (better known to divers as the “Verde Wall” and the “Washing Machine”)—consist of rock outcrops that appear to have been eroded from the main island off the northwestern and southeastern shores, respectively.
           
Both sites extend seaward from land, intersecting the general flow of water, resulting in eddies. This whirlpool pattern—accounting for divers’ “washing machine” reference—concentrates larvae and plankton that attract commercially important species such as surgeon fish, trigger fish, wrass, rainbow runner, bat fish, sweetlips and parrot fish, as well as nontarget fishes like butterfly fish, Moorish idol, anemonefish and damselfish.   
           
Soft corals such as Xenia (hand coral), Sinularia (finger coral), Dendronephthya (tree coral) and Sarcophyton (leather coral) take over Pulong Bato, while Tubastrea (tube coral) and encrusting Montipora (pore coral), along with sponges, hydroids, and tunicates (sea squirts), dominate Nalayag reef.
           
Major marine habitat

The Indo-Malay-Philippines Archipelago (Impa) has long been considered an area of high marine biodiversity, according to Carpenter, a biological sciences professor at the Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.
           
To examine the pattern of richness within the Impa in finer detail, Carpenter and coauthor Victor Springer of the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History, used a geographical information system overlay of 2,983 generalized distribution maps of marine species.
           
With these maps digitized and analyzed in 10 km by 10 km cell-sized sets, the typical bull’s-eye pattern of species’ richness, increasing from east to west, came into more detailed focus—identifying a peak of marine biodiversity on the central Philippine islands.
           
“I was expecting that the Sulawesi Moluccan area would come up with the highest diversity,” Carpenter admitted, “but up to 1,736 species, or nearly 60 percent of all species, are located in the Verde Island passage between Mindoro and Luzon.”
           
The pattern of diversity is repeated in most data subsets based on distribution, habitat, invertebrate taxa and shore fishes.
           
“Indonesia, because of its greater area, may eventually be shown to have a greater overall marine biodiversity than the Philippines,” he conceded. “However, there is a higher concentration of species per unit area in the Philippines than anywhere in Indonesia.”
           
But Carpenter warned that this major marine habitat is also listed as the most threatened in the world.
           
Explained Carpenter, who spent over 30 years studying marine environments in the Philippines alongside local scientists and conservationists: “The concentration of limited-range endemics in the Philippines poses a danger of mass extinctions on a marine scale similar to endangered Brazilian rain forests.”
           
As of February 2006, an estimated 2,824 marine fish species are listed for the Philippines at the FishBase web site—including 33 endemic, 1,729 reef-associated, 169 pelagic and 336 deepwater species. Five of the seven sea-turtle species known to exist in the world today reside in Philippine waters.
           
But habitat degradation—or accidents like the Guimaras Island oil spill that damaged marine resources in the Visayas—can wipe out a variety of unique biotic communities.
           
In particular, Carpenter cited the rare red fin wrasse found only in Verde Passage.
           
“There is ample justification to prioritize the Philippines for conservation,” Carpenter stressed. “A marine biodiversity epicenter represents a national heritage and a global obligation. Conserving these habitats and diversity can help us understand the processes that govern marine biodiversity.”

Alliance building

The Verde Passage Marine Corridor that is spotlighted in Carpenter’s study is comprised of the coasts, islands and waters of Southern Luzon’s five provinces: Batangas, Mindoro Occidental, Mindoro Oriental, Marinduque and Romblon.
           
“The area harbors some of the country’s richest fishing grounds like Batangas Coast, Balayan Bay, and Tayabas Bay; outstanding diving destinations like Anilao, Verde Island, and Puerto Galera; a major port and transportation facility; and several energy industries like oil, gas and geothermal,” FPCI’s Quicho said.
           
Sadly, these same socioeconomic activities can also pose threats to the area.
           
In 2004, even before Carpenter named Verde Island Passage the “center of the center” of global marine biodiversity, the Verde Island Passage Integrated Conservation and Development Program was initiated through the partnership of First Gen Corp., FPCI, CI-Philippines and the City of Batangas.
           
“The twin goals are to protect the marine ecosystem so that species and ecological process are sustained, and to improve the well-being of people in terms of income, participation and basic services,” Quicho explained.
           
Gerry Reyes, FPCI director for field operations and Verde Island project coordinator, added that the stakeholders themselves identified the issues surrounding the lack of awareness on conservation measures—from ecological (coral reef damage, siltation, garbage from ships and households) to lack of enforcement (cyanide fishing, compressor fishers and nonresident fishers).
           
The slightest environmental change affects coral reefs.
           
“Storm surges and earthquakes naturally ‘weed’ some species to make room for new ones, resulting in a highly diverse ecosystem,” said Lopez, who has been diving for over a decade.
           
“Pulong Bato’s reefs, for example, show soft corals colonizing a once luxuriant growth of stag horn corals. The coral rubble littering the island’s fore slopes hint that Verde was once dominantly fringed by branching types of hard coral. But Pulong Bato’s current conditions—current and water clarity, for example—favor the takeover of soft corals,” Lopez said.
           
Nature certainly keeps its own rhythm and checks.
           
“Strong currents bring larvae to the reefs, clear water promotes coral growth, and seasonal winds that mean rough seas prevent harvest of resources at certain times of year,” Lopez said. “But human activities like the use of dynamite and cyanide prevent the ecosystem from just revitalizing itself.” 
           
Depending on the extent of coral damage, recovery ranges from five to 40 years.

Marine management

However, nature’s capacity to renew itself must be reinforced with management measures.
           
“The business sector, like First Gen, has to participate in sustaining programs that connect biodiversity conservation with human well-being,” Lopez explained. “This way, stakeholders, from as young as schoolchildren, are made more aware of how their lives are linked to the marine ecosystem—in Verde Island’s case, through FPCI-developed coastal resources education modules.”
           
Lopez added that working with groups in Tingloy and Apo Reef Natural Park would widen the scope of enforcement and help sustain the efforts to protect Verde Passage.
           
Setting up additional sanctuaries—where high coral cover has been observed and where fish populations are known to concentrate and spawn—will also enable residents of the island’s six barangays to better monitor, evaluate and regulate activities in the area.
           
“Preventing the destruction of habitats, which are niches for many reef organisms, maintains the area’s biodiversity and helps damaged reefs and fish stock to recover,” Trono of CI-Philippines stressed. “Protecting a portion of the spawning stock enhances fishery production. These give communities the experience and pride in managing their own resources.”
           
Pulong Bato and Nalayag, with its luxuriant coral growth, have shown the benefits of protection. Of the eight sites surrounding Verde Island earlier assessed for coral and reef fish communities, these two MPAs showed the highest fish densities and biomass estimates, Trono reported.
           
“Locals and divers indicated that before the MPA declaration, these records were not at these same levels,” he said. “The change can be attributed to good management and greater awareness resulting from the program.”
           
Tranquilino Mariano of barangay San Andres, a deputized Bantay Dagat, confirmed this. “Local aquarium fishers, like me, have been trained in the use of nets, and we have all become vigilant in going after blast fishers,” he said.
           
The program’s next phase involves field testing of abalone culture, as well as skills training—on, say, weaving, welding, or reflexology—to offer alternative livelihood for fisher folks.
           
That Sunday’s final dive at Nalayag yielded a second hawksbill turtle sighting, which boded more than just exciting dives in the future.
           
Waters hospitable to the pawikan—and its rare kind, at that—indicated an ecosystem that’s holding up well, suggesting a fighting chance for the planet’s richest concentration of marine life and—in the larger interconnected scheme of things—for us as well.

THEORY OF EVOLUTION

Why the Philippines is the “center of the center” of marine biodiversity

This is biological sciences professor Kent E. Carpenter theory: During the Pleistocene ice age, land barriers and, perhaps, cooler surface temperatures and the restriction of currents, isolated the South China, Sulu, Celebes and Philippine Seas—the sea basins around the Philippines—from one another.
           
“It is also possible that smaller seas within the central Philippines became isolated, promoting allopatric speciation,” Carpenter explained, “that is, species evolving in isolation because of the separation of populations.”
           
Another aspect of geological history that could have contributed to the concentration of species in the Philippines is the integration of islands that created the archipelago.
           
Carpenter cited Robert Hall’s reconstructions of Southeast Asia and Southwest Pacific during the Cenozoic era, which showed that the Philippines was integrated from at least three major island systems, each displaced over 1,000 km apart.
           
In the early Cenozoic era, most of present-day Mindanao and eastern Visayas was a shallow sea; Northern Luzon, Western Visayas and other elements of Southeast Asian islands originated near present-day eastern Borneo; and the Palawan-Calamianes-Mindoro archipelago was associated with the continental Eurasian lithospheric plate—an established island arc continuous with the present-day island of Taiwan.
           
The process of these three elements joining together, Carpenter said, created barriers when the larger islands took shape—again potentially separating populations and providing conditions for allopatric speciation.
           
“For example, present-day Negros collided with the southern tip of Luzon around 22 million years ago and separated eastern and western basins,” he said. “If we assume that the different island systems of the Philippines developed their own endemic biotas, then the integration resulted in concentrated diversity.”