“Fish production from coastal areas in Asia has been declining. It was estimated that coastal fish stocks in South Asia and Southeast Asia have declined by 5-30% over the last five decades, negatively impacting fisher incomes, fisheries employment, revenues, trade, and social stability.” – Dr. Herminia A. Francisco in her introductory of the book, Marine and Coastal Ecosystem Valuation, Institutions, and Policy in Southeast Asia
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Unless Filipinos help protect and manage their coastal ecosystem, the country may don’t have fish to feed its growing population. Already, the resources that provide the “poor man’s source of protein” are already strained to the limits.
“Like the other vital resources such as forests, Philippine fisheries are about to collapse – a victim of the almost unabated plunder of the commons,” deplores Roy C. Alimoane, the director of the Davao-based Mindanao Baptist Rural Life Center (MBRLC).
As defined, the “commons” encompasses unoccupied land and all waters which are considered God-given set of resources for all people to consume as much as needed. In Genesis 1:29, God said: “They will be yours for food.”
But what God had given appear to have been abused to the point of exhaustion. Despite the country’s vast marine resources – 220 million hectares of coastal and oceanic territorial water area – the Philippines is now a shortfall in fish supply.
Fish is a staple food of Filipinos. “Fish and seafood represent an important source of protein for the average Filipino, at around 41%of animal protein intake,” reports the Kuala Lumpur-based World Fish Center.
In 2008, the Philippines ranked sixth in global fish and aquaculture production. Twenty-three years earlier, in 1985, the country was listed number four. Next to China, the Philippines was the second largest seaweed producer in the world.
Five years later, the country ranked seventh worldwide in terms of fish production, according to Bureau of Fishery and Aquatic Resources (BFAR). In 2014, it produced 4.69 million metric tons of fish valued at P237.71 billion.
“These figures suggest we are rich in fisheries and coastal resources as a nation,” said Senator Loren Legarda in a speech.
Fish shortage
During his time, French novelist Jules Verne (the man behind “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea”) suggested that when the world reached the limits of food production on the land, man could turn to the oceans. That was what most countries had been doing over the past several decades.
“Between 1950 and 1989, the fish catch expanded more than four-fold, climbing from 22 million tons to 100 million tons,” Lester R. Brown reported in his feature, “Facing Food Scarcity.” “During the six years since then, the catch has leveled off. Contrary to the prognosis of Jules Verne, we reached the limits of the oceans first.”
This is true particularly in the Philippines, a country with more than 7,000 islands. “A major fishing ground, Lingayen Gulf, reached its maximum sustainable yield more than 20 years ago,” claims a report released by UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “The fishery now has four times the optimum effort for the available fish stocks. Catch rates in the gulf are only one-fifth of what they were 15 years ago, compelling fishers to invest more time and money in dwindling catches.”
In some areas, not only has the volume of catch been reduced, but also quality. The FAO report cites Central Visayas as a case in point. “There has been an overall shift in catch composition, away from coastal pelagic to oceanic pelagic species and away from demersal to pelagic species,” it says.
In the Davao Gulf, the volume and quality of the fish have been found to be in constant decline since 2000, according to a decade-study conducted by the World Fish Center. The study looked at the volume and quality of the harvests of 10 commonly fished species in the gulf: “matambaka,” “tamban,” “moro-moro,” “caraballas,” “bilong-bilong,” lapu-lapu, “danggit,” “molmol,” “talakitok” and “maya-maya.”
Except for “maya-maya,” the harvest numbers for the species have been falling. At the current rate of decline, the “caraballas,” “bilong-bilong,” “molmol” and “danggit” may all disappear completely from Davao Gulf within a decade.
Fishery experts claim that all fishing activities depend on a fragile resource base which, if mismanaged and overexploited, can easily collapse.
“The past three decades have seen the rapid decline of the Philippine coastal ecosystems,” Legarda admitted. Coastal ecosystems refer to mangroves, seagrasses and coral reefs.
“Coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves are among the world’s most important and most endangered ecosystems,” writes Dr. Miguel D. Fortes, a marine scientist and the first Filipino to receive the prestigious International Biwako Prize for Ecology. “They are also the major life-support and protective ecosystems of the coastal zone.”
Coral reefs
Coral reefs are the marine equivalent of rainforests. “Our coral reefs, together with those of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, contain the highest number of species of plants and animals,” says Dr. Helen T. Yap, also a marine scientist whose expertise is the ecology of coral reefs. “They lie at the center of biodiversity in our planet.”
The Philippines has 27,000 square kilometers of coral reef area within a 15- to 30-meter depth, one of the largest reef areas in the world. Almost 55% of the fish consumed by Filipinos depend on coral reefs; 10%-15% of the total marine fisheries production comes from coral reefs.
“One of the greatest natural treasures, they are habitats for rare species, including some 488 species of corals, 971 species of benthic algae, and 2,000 species of fish,” Dr. Fortes says. “A single reef may contain 3,000 species of corals, fish and shellfish.”
In the Philippines, coral reefs are already endangered. “Our coral reefs are highly stressed,” Dr. Yap observes, “but I would not say yet they are about to go extinct.” Speaking like a true marine scientist, she adds, “Much can still be done to save them.”
“Reefs are tough,” says Dr. Clive Wilkinson, a biologist at the Australian Institute of Marine Science. “You can hammer them with cyclones, and they’ll bounce right back. What they can’t bounce back from is chronic, constant stress.”
The kind of stress, in other words, that is being applied by humans. Dr. Yap agrees. “A very widespread and notorious problem is fishing with the use of explosives and cyanide,” she says. “Dynamite shatters everything on the reef surface. The trauma of the impact is such that corals and other organisms never recover.”
Unfortunately, dynamite fishing is still rampant. “Almost every coastal area in the Philippines has that problem,” Dr. Yap says.
Cyanide fishing also contributes to the obliteration of coral reefs. Each year, an estimated 330,000 pounds of cyanide is reportedly sprayed on Philippine coral reefs. “Cyanide is a metabolic poison,” Dr. Yap explains. “It dissolves in water, and squirted directly onto corals by fishermen who free-dive underwater. The cyanide is meant to stun the fish hiding among the coral colonies so they can be collected easily. But since corals are living creatures, they die quickly from the cyanide. So do all plants and animals within effective reach of the poison.”
However, Dr. Yap believes that the most single cause of reef degradation is still sedimentation, resulting from deforestation, destructive agriculture and mining, among others. “I would highlight deforestation more,” says the scientist who was named one of The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service (TOWNS) in 1998.
The disappearance of the coral reefs does not only destroy the habitats of fishes and other marine creatures but jeopardizes the discovery of future medicines.
“Coral reef plants and animals are important sources of new medicines being developed to treat cancer, arthritis, human bacterial infections, heart disease, viruses, and other diseases,” says the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Some coral reef organisms produce powerful chemicals to fend off attackers, and scientists continue to research the medicinal potential of these substances.”
Some of them have already been unearthed. “Didemnin, derived from sea squirts, is active against a broad range of viruses which cause colds, herpes, or meningitis; coral reefs have also yielded potential anti-cancer drugs,” Dr. Fortes reports.
Mangroves
Mangroves – communities of trees in the tidal flats in coastal waters, extending inland along rivers where the water is tidal, saline or brackish – are not spared from denudation. According to Legarda, 70% of the country’s mangroves are already destroyed.
“All over the country, whatever coastal province you visit, you see the same plight – desolate stretches of shoreline completely stripped of mangrove cover and now totally exposed to the pounding of the ocean’s waves,” an environmentalist observes.
According to Dr. Fortes, there are 25-30 species of true mangrove trees and an equal number of associated species. “In 1918, the country’s mangrove forests were estimated to cover 5,000 square kilometers,” he writes. “By 1970, they had dwindled to 2,880 square kilometers and to 2,420 square kilometers a decade later.”
By 2012, only 117,000 hectares remained, the BFAR reports. The Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) says that most of the remaining vegetated mangrove areas in the country today are second growth, containing other than the original species.
The most rapid decrease of mangroves happened during the 1960s and 1970s when government policies encouraged the expansion of aquaculture in various parts of the country. The expansion occurred largely during a period when real prices for fish and shrimp were steadily increasing.
Mangroves are very important to marine life. They are home to 68 species of fish (including bangus, kitan, tilapia, eel, and mullet, to name a few), 54 species of crustaceans (shrimps, prawns, and crabs), and 56 species of gastropods.
“Fish use the spaces under the mass of prop roots of mangrove trees as ‘delivery rooms,’ and the offspring of many marine species spend their growing period in the mangrove swamps before moving on to the open said,” says Dr. Rafael D. Guerrero III, former director of the Philippine Council for Marine and Aquatic Resources Research and Development. – (To be concluded)
