Protecting Philippine Reefs
As fish populations plummet, a Peace Corps Volunteer works with Filipinos to restore the sea life depended on for food. Lesson plan| Tommy Schultz, Philippines |
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Photographed, written, and narrated by returned Peace Corps Volunteer Tommy Schultz. For more information about Tommy's experience in the Philippines, visit www.tommyschultz.com
Protecting Philippine Reefs
Tommy Schultz
Peace Corps Volunteer
Philippines, 2004–2006
Hi, I’m Tommy Schultz. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines from 2004 to 2006, assigned as a coastal resource management Volunteer in the Sustainable Island development program. That’s me sitting on the bow of the boat loaded with scuba gear.
My co-workers from the Silliman University Marine Lab and I were visiting a remote island to do a survey of the fish population that the local people depend on for food.
In fact, much of my work involved helping small subsistence fishing communities protect the spectacularly beautiful coral reefs and threatened coastal environments in their country.
Many people don’t realize that the Philippines is home to an even greater diversity of marine animal species than Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Here, a green sea turtle swims in the brightly lit shallows of a sand bar within the Tubbataha Marine Park. Such turtles can reach up to 400 pounds.
Tubbataha, a United Nations World Heritage reef, lies in the middle of the Sulu Sea. It is more than 10 hours away from the mainland by boat. Unfortunately the area is frequently raided by poachers from as far away as China in search of pristine fishing grounds, because the spots closer their home are depleted.
I was lucky to spend a week at Tubbataha, living on a boat with some of the dedicated scientists and volunteers from the World Wildlife Fund. We documented the thriving health of this remarkable ecosystem.
Here, a tiger shark swims from the shallow reef towards the deep blue of the open Sulu Sea. Although these sharks are often dangerous to anything that swims, they’re a sign that this ecosystem is well balanced.
In other parts of the country, where overfishing has decimated fish populations, top predators such as tiger sharks are among the first animals to disappear from the reef because they have nothing left to eat—all the large fish have been caught by people.
Over the course of the days I spent at Tubbataha, I often thought to myself that the entire Philippines must have looked so undisturbed a hundred years ago. Here, a bird called a brown booby soars overhead.
Today the pressures of feeding a rapidly expanding human population have greatly reduced the numbers of large fish and made the lives of the people living in small subsistence fishing villages increasingly difficult.
Fish such as this sweetlips are an important source of food for subsistence fishing communities all over the country. Catching them is becoming increasingly difficult because of overfishing and because of destructive fishing methods, such as dynamite blasting, which kills all the fish within its blast area.
I often imagined how much easier life in a small fishing village in the Philippines would have been in years past. Here, a skunk clownfish rests in the protection of a sea anemone.
In the days when teeming schools of large and healthy fish, such as these trevally,] thrived in the reefs across the country, a family could easily feed themselves with a few hours spent fishing.
Unfortunately, in many areas around the country today, the only fish of any size left on the reef are species such as lionfish, which grow many long, poisonous spines for protection and are not very good to eat.
Jellyfish have also become more plentiful in places where the ecological balance of fish species has been degraded.
Most subsistence fishermen in the Philippines travel by boat in a traditional bangka. The outrigger design provides great stability in heavy seas, and is probably borrowed from designs that originated in Polynesia centuries ago.
Today people who fish for their food often work as a team to better their chances of catching the increasingly smaller and scarce fish to feed their families. In this photo, a father and son take turns diving and spotting fish below their tiny bangka.
Ideally they would catch a large fish such as the trevally, which is related to the tuna. This trevally probably weighs 40 pounds, but fish of this size have become increasingly rare in the Philippines, due to overfishing and destruction of mangrove forests.
Coastal mangrove forests provide nursery habitat for young fish to hide in and avoid predators, but have been cleared in many parts of the country today.
In most places across the country, the average fish available for food are less than a couple of inches long, because most are caught and eaten long before they grow to adult size. Here, a shimmering school of tiny fish teems above the reef that used to be home to much larger species.
Instead of using the hook and line from the days when large fish were plentiful, today subsistence fishermen use nets to capture large schools of immature fish for their food. This fisherman shows off an afternoon’s catch, which he will take home to his family.
These little fish will be cooked and eaten whole, because they are too small to filet the way a larger species such as a trevally would be prepared.
Fishing this way is hard work. Across the Philippines you will find fishermen like this man perched on the edge of his bangka staring expectantly into the deep blue water surrounding their communities, looking for their next meal.
Once the fisherman spots a school of tiny fish shimmering below, his fishing companion will swim from the boat while dragging his net to encircle the school. Many times the man in the boat will slap the surface of the water loudly with a paddle to frighten the fish and cause them to swim into the net and become entangled.
Baked in the harsh tropical sun and stung by salt from the sea, fishermen like this father-and-son team sometimes paddle miles through waves, currents, and wind to bring in their daily catch.
Many families on islands in the Philippines do not have refrigerators to store food, so they must catch and eat their fish each day—or go hungry.
Everyone must pitch in to catch food. Here, young boys search for fish for their families after a morning of classes at their tiny elementary school on the small island of Apo.
And even if they don’t have a boat, children, like this boy, will go out with spearguns to find small fish for their family meals in the shallow parts of the reefs.
With the population of the Philippines projected to double within the next 20 years, the coastal environment of the country will come under increasing strain to feed the people. This young boy holds a small octopus that he snared in the shallow seagrass bed near his house.
Dynamite “fishing” and other devastating fishing methods often destroy the last vestiges of the livelihoods of subsistence communities. After dropping a homemade bomb on the reef, fishermen dive to the bottom to retrieve the hundreds of fish killed by the explosive blast.
Luckily the news about the reefs in the Philippines is not all bad. In places such as Apo Island, subsistence fishing communities are finding innovative ways to provide a sustainable livelihood from fishing.
In 1982, after nearly a decade of destructive dynamite fishing had demolished the once-teeming reefs, the Apo Island community teamed up with my co-workers at the Silliman University to establish one of the first marine sanctuaries in the Philippines. Species such as this clown fish had almost disappeared from the island’s reefs but have now begun to thrive again.
The marine sanctuary on Apo Island was initially just a small area of reef that was designated strictly as a no-fishing area. Encouragingly, only a few years after the establishment of the sanctuary, valuable species such as these jacks—also a species related to tuna—returned to spawn in the Apo Marine Sanctuary.
With the protection of the marine sanctuary, other species thrived in this relatively small area, but then moved out to repopulate the formerly barren areas of the reef. Here, a large basket anemone is home to a clown fish while a school of saltwater catfish swims by in the background.
After nearly 20 years of peer-enforced protection of their reef by the Apo Island community, a school of more than a thousand adult jacks has returned to the traditional fishing grounds of the island.
Because of the continuing dedication of Apo Island community leaders, the marine sanctuary provides an example for other parts of the country—and the world—for an escape from the viciously destructive cycle of overfishing and poverty.
Here, an Apo Island community leader swims with an endangered hawksbill sea turtle, one of the many rare species that thrive today around this island.
With strong leadership, other subsistence fishing communities in the Philippines will benefit from Apo’s example, and the spectacular biodiversity of this country will be preserved for generations to come.