Much of the archipelago’s undersea splendor is protected, but some areas are being stressed by climate change and harmed by destructive fishing practices
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Blast fishing is deadly for fish and dangerous for fishers. If a bottle explodes too soon, you could lose a hand, an arm, or a life. A fisher died this way two days before I arrived here at the Danajon Bank, 20 miles east of Cebu island, in a region of the Philippines with a long history of destructive fishing practices: explosives, cyanide to flush fish out of coral crevices, nets so fine they catch anything that moves.
A boat captain frees a bumphead sunfish, also called a mola, from a net. After spending a night in the Verde Island Passage, southwest of Manila, he and his crew of more than two dozen caught only about two bushels of fish, plus the sunfish, which typically is not eaten in the Philippines. Overfishing has depleted some of the archipelago’s once abundant waters.He picks up a sea cucumber and hands the warty creature to me. A tassel of white threads adorns its rear end.
I am gleaning too—hoping to learn how coral reefs might be preserved at a time not just of increasing exploitation but also of human-driven changes in the very ocean itself. Warming seas, acidifying seas, rising seas—these are the darker shadows that fall across the world’s coral reefs. Fishers work in designated areas near the Apo Island Marine Reserve, established in 1982 by the local community with guidance from biologist Angel Alcala of Silliman University. The sanctuary proved to be a spectacular success, inspiring more protected areas like it.to respond to a diminishing resource: Ease up or double down. Filipinos have done both. The bomb-cratered moonscape I saw at Danajon Bank is the end result of one approach: destructive overfishing of reef ecosystems.
Apo Island’s success caught the attention of Rodrigo Alanano, who was elected Dauin’s mayor in 2001. Alanano decided to increase the number of marine protected areas along the Dauin coastline. He could do this because municipalities have jurisdiction over their coastal waters out to 15 kilometers, or 9.3 miles.
Blast fishing, using explosives to kill fish, has destroyed many reefs in the Philippines, leaving them wastelands of dead coral. This reef is near South Atoll in Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park.As Alanano foresaw, such sights are a drawing card for tourists, and Dauin has become a popular dive destination, as have dozens of other sites across the 7,641 islands in the Philippines.
Rene Abesamis, one of Alcala’s colleagues at Silliman, has studied the process in Dauin’s MPAs. He chose the vagabond butterflyfish for his research and found that its larvae can drift up to 23 miles in monsoon winds and strong currents before settling into a new reef habitat. I saw the struggle that Siquijor’s fishers face when I slipped into the silky sea one morning to watch a group of men haul up a fish trap, or, from the seabed about 250 feet below us. Slowly it rose, a 15-foot-long woven basket spacious enough that I could have swum pirouettes inside it. The pattern of its bamboo weave was intricate, the work of skilled hands.
In the islands of the Calamian Group, at the northern tip of Palawan, people are learning how to ranch sea cucumbers. I helped release dozens of juveniles the size of my little finger from net cages so they could free-range across warm estuarine flats. In two months they will reach the size of fat sausages. When dried, sea cucumbers sell for more than $30 a pound, 10 times more than grouper.