Last August 7, a dead 14-feet whale shark washed ashore at Sitio Cabugan, Barangay Busaon in Tagum City, Davao del Norte, was found.
“It died of toxic waste, which were ingested by the whale shark,” said Darrell Blatchley, owner of D’Bone Collector Museum in Davao City, who did a necropsy examination of the marine animal together with a Filipino science researcher.
Blatchley, who had done necropsy on 60 whales and dolphins, countless turtles and megamouth shark in the last nine years, found plastic cups and two sandwich bags inside the stomach and candy wrappers in the gills.
“I am angry,” he told Philippines Graphic. “Nothing has changed. Man causes the death of these marine animals.”
More than 400 species of shark roam around the world’s oceans. In recent years, the Davao Gulf has become a home and migration path for several species, including the whale sharks.
The sharks are some of the most feared creatures. “We fear them, but at the same time, we are fascinated by them,” says television host Doc Ferds Recio of “Born to be Wild.”
“Some of the most dangerous sharks in the world roam the waters of the more than 7,000 islands in the Philippines,” wrote Jodi Thornton O’Connel, author of Kinds of Sharks in the Philippines.
Touted as “highly feared apex predator of the sea,” sharks have been on this planet for some 400 million years. They possess replaceable razor-sharp teeth that grow in tens of thousands over a lifetime.
Sharks help maintain the delicate balance of these marine ecosystems. “They are top predators,” says Dr. Arnel “AA” Yaptinchay, founder and director of Marine Wildlife Watch of the Philippines. “Sharks maintain healthy ecosystems by keeping some fish populations in check. They remove weak individuals, thus keeping fish stocks robust.”
But while sharks may have a deadly reputation, they are facing extinction. “If you go to any reef around the world, except for those that are really protected, the sharks are gone,” deplored Dr. Ransom Myers. “Their value is so great that completely harmless sharks, like whale sharks, are killed, for their fins.”
Dr. Myers was a former American government scientist who sought to warn that overfishing would lead to collapse of Atlantic cod populations and later discovered that 90 percent of the world’s bluefin tuna and other large predatory fish had disappeared.
“Humans have always been very good at killing big animals,” commented Dr. Myers, who died in 2007 at the age of 54. “Ten thousand years ago, with just some pointed sticks, humans managed to wipe out the woolly mammoth, saber tooth tigers, mastodons, and giant vampire bats. The same could happen in the oceans.”
Around the world, people kill nearly 100 million sharks and billions of other sea animals each year, studies show.
Although concerns for sharks are high, shark populations continue to decline due to lack of fisheries management and rampant illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, according to a report released by the Worldwide Fund for Nature and Traffic (WWF) some years back.
“Sharks are some of the least understood predators on the planet,” deplores Barbara Block, an American marine biologist.
Although the WWF report has classified the whale shark and manta rays as protected species that are banned for export, there is no protection for their habitats. “Whale shark aggregation sites have been identified as priority conservation areas. There is no study on population estimates of any species of sharks in the Philippines,” the report said.
Based on estimates from various environmental groups, shark and shark fin trade in the Philippines is a well-established industry.
In 2006, the Iloilo-based Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center listed the ten most commonly taken shark species in the Philippines as follows: Whitetip ReefShark, Spurdog Squalus megalops; rays Rhinobatus spp., Brownbanded Bamboo Shark, Giant Guitarfish; Blacktip Shark; Sharptooth Lemon Shark Negaprion acutidens; Pelagic Thresher, Tiger Shark, and Silvertip Shark.
The data submitted to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that between 2000 and 2008 the Philippines reported exports of dried and salted shark fins (averaging 36 tons per year) and shark liver oil (19 tons per year).
This has to stop, said House Speaker Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. So much so that she filed House Bill No. 7912, known as An Act Regulating the Catching, Sale, Purchase, Possession, Transportation, Importation, and Exportation of All Sharks, Rays, and Chimaeras and Any Part Thereof in the Country.
“With over 200 species of sharks and rays in the Philippines, our country plays a crucial role in conserving these ecologically and economically important marine species,” Arroyo said in her explanatory note of the bill.
“Due to their unique life history traits, sharks and their relatives reproduces slowly, making them particularly vulnerable to threats from targeted fisheries, overfishing, bycatch, pollution, unregulated tourism, and climate change,” she pointed out. “Declined population will find it hard to recover without special conservation attention.”
Aside from ecological benefits, sharks have also been proven to boost local economies through sustainable tourism activities. “You can use alive sharks over and over again throughout their lifetime. But once they are dead, you can use them only once and nothing more,” Dr. Yaptinchay reminded.
The Arroyo bill supports the country’s commitment to international obligations, including the Convention on Biological Diversity, Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, and the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species.
Once passes, there are subsequent fines and penalties for those who will kill, take, keep in captivity, inflict injury, harass and trade vulnerable, threatened, endangered or critically endangered species:
Imprisonment of two years and one day to four years and/or a fine of P30,000 to P300,000 per animal if inflicted or undertaken against vulnerable species;
Imprisonment of one year and one day to two years and/or fine of P20,000 to P200,000 per animal if inflicted or undertaken against other threatened species;
Imprisonment of four years and one day to six years and/or fine of P50,000 to half million per animal if inflicted or undertaken against endangered species; and
Imprisonment of six years and one day to twelve years and/or fine of P100,000 to one million per animal if inflicted or undertaken species listed as critically endangered.
“This bill aims to find the intersection between management and utilization in the hopes of finding the balance between human needs and the integrity of the Philippine marine ecosystem,” Arroyo pointed out.
