The Ocean Floor Is Like Our Lungs We Can Not See

The oarfish washed in Antique, Panay Island Philippines Photo by Nickson Calawag

I am writing about what my fellow Ilonggo Rock Drilon has posted on facebook about a deep water sea fish called Oarfish washed the second time in nearby province of Antique which is beside my hometown Iloilo. It is a rarity, even in many parts of the world, oarfishes are washed on shoreline.  

Why this oarfish surfaced on the beach, I have some probable reasons why.

1. The quality of land will affect the quality of the sea especially the ocean floor—the bed rock of our garbage and pollutants. Human recklessness to nature invades the unseen. Contaminants can harm any living creature.

Plastic mistaken as food, suffocates them and they die

The so called Great Pacific Garbage Patch -an accummulation of non-biodagradable plastics from all over the world can kill all  the animals on the ocean floor with irreversible effects.

MATERIAL GREEDINESS. What if all of us citizens of the world sort our garbage than these kids will do the job for us?

2.  The ocean floor is the barometer of our geological conditions including

tremors and earthquakes. Nature itself can tell what is next to happen, like frogs croaking for the rain to come. Oarfishes in Japan indicate there will be a forthcoming earthquake.

    3, Climate change. It has been a fact that because of global warming, sea creatures are confused in which some fishes find themselves alienated to the ocean conditions and migrate to where it is not their geographical abode. , ex. Tropical Lion fishes living only in Indo-Pacific Ocean have migrated to the  Western Atlantic, Caribbean, and Gulf of Mexico. It is something a mystery to scientists until today.     

4. Man inflicting injury on sea creatures with materials things including broken fish nets and ropes. I assume looking at the picture the oar fish is highly battered with physical injuries and its head gone. Oarfishes are deep ocean fish and swims slowly ( due to its length and heavy weight) and can be carried by under currents and washed to shallow waters. Global warming is also on the ocean floor where nature can take its toll without us detecting it. Animals there can. 

Scientists may have to trace where the Antique oarfish came from, ex., from which sea? Japan? South China Sea? 

Possible causes this fish was washed to the shore:

(1)      The Simirara Island mining in Antique may have its chemical pollutants in the ocean floor as well and it affected it. It has its huge problems in environmental compliances in many years as news reported it.

The ocean floor is like our hands we can see from the outside but what is really happening inside we may not know.

(2)      This fish was most likely  trapped in a strong broken fish net in the ocean floor ( as they are deep sea creatures) and or ate plastic garbage, it died, and washed away. (SEE MY COMPILED PICTURES).

Broken fishnet traps the animal forever

Clear plastic are mistaken as jelly fishes and some fish will eat them to their death, 

(3)      Old age ( perhaps battered by ocean floor movements ex, tetonic plates, so it died).Ex, we had recent earthquakes and tremors in the country and abroad.

(4)      Seeking for food that is no longer there in the ocean. Oarfishes actually just eat small crustaceans. So when we deplete them, or any other fishes,  with their food it is because we abuse the food cycle of marine creatures by over fishing what could have been food for them.

If men were to eat plastic as well?

It is a principle in environmental science that WHAT WE  SEE IS ONLY ON LAND, BUT WE DO NOT SEE IS UNDERNEATH THE OCEAN. This is the most dangerous lesson man should learn from  our abuses on land, that our ocean bed is the catch basin of all of pollutants and plastic garbage.

Ergo, all cities in the Philippines being a coastal country, including Iloilo City which has mounds of unsorted garbage including plastics should create awareness and implement zero dangerous wastes dumped on land and may eventually end up to the ocean.

 If one visit the areas near Sooc, Arevalo it is full of plastic scattered all over the place and rice fields. Sooc connects to Iloilo River and up until the Iloilo Straight (between Guimaras and Panay Islands) on to the sea and on to the ocean. Nature is not confined. It is an eco-system like our human body. Got a tootache? Your entire body can not function as well. 

I work as a volunteer in Sooc and created a project there called Project Zero to upcycle used tarps and plastics in the city. Yet the entire Iloilo City and others in Panay except Boracay Island do not segregate its garbage yet. Let us not wait until the super cities in the old Iloilo airport rises to fill up our garbage bins with yet unsorted garbage.

Our solid waste management is not in place as I saw a facebook complaint about the methane gas emitted in Calajunan dumpsite in Iloilo City. Our landfills have pernicious smell and full of hazardous elements as we do not segregate our daily wastes at all. All batteries, corrosive materials and plastics are mixed up with biogradable garbage which could be recycled, ex, backyard garden fertilizers,  and need not be collected by trucks which will reduce Iloilo City its costs of hauling solid wastes to the dumpsites. There are easy solutions. It starts from our own homes. We dispose our garbage properly remembering we do not, our friends in the ocean will just all die. 

I once wrote in facebook, the litters at the Iloilo City port which may be thrown by the locals and the tourists. And by its sheer promixity to the ocean, will all settle in the ocean floor. I suggested then in that post that the City should already impose  an anti-littering bill, having been successful with its anti-smoking bill. A tooth for a tooth because others are so stubborn. Of course, I personally will be happy, if the city stops all its fondness for tarpaulin billboards placing them just at any possible empty spaces including our plazas. I recently posted in my facebook this concern.

In Boracay, no one will collect our garbage if they are not segregated at all. I can attest to that becuase I am a business owner, member of Boracay Foundation and resident there for years.  We commissioned the UP Visayas College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences to study the marine eco-system of Boracay . The scientists gave it a very good grade for its ocean floor which is very clean. Its corral reefs and sea grasses are very healthy.  But on the ocean floor, they collected garbage specimen of “Chippy”, “Boy Bawang”, “ Stork”, “ Snow Bear” plastic wrappers and department store  plastic shopping bags--- all of them are of close affinities to locals who throw these on land and washed to the sea. Of course, these can be mistaken as food by sea creatures. In Hawaii, not a single plastic is allowed. In Makati, there is a stiff penalty for stores using plastic bags except on  wet food items.

Man's material greediness eaten by animals

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Oil spill in Guimaras Island

I was commissioned by the Metro Manila Development Authority and the Manila Mayors Spouses Association with  CITEM to create livelihood through Crafts Ecology in all Metro Manila districts by upcycling garbage to useable utilities. It is also teaching citizens the importance of  how our ocean will suffer with our garbage on land.

As member of the Society for Sustainable Tourism and Development Inc (SSTDI) with pilot project in Coron, Palawan teaching all to attain excellence in sustainable development, environmental conservation and stewardship to help mitigate climate change by implimenting green solutions. it starts from people being educated on this concern and this becomes an everday habit, not really imposing archaic rules which usually become co-terminus with public office. 

I share with you all some of my lecture slides related to the symbiotic relationship of land and sea which I presented to the organic rice farmers of Zarraga Integrated Diversified Organic Farmers Association in Iloilo last week. It taught them the value of sustainability being not confined to any specific territory rather as a matter of global concern with each dot connected to one another.The farmers appreciated how they need to stop horrendous amounts of  chemicals and pesticides for decades which certainly can be washed off shore and will affect the quality of water in our ocean, too,  to an irreversible effects to all animals in the sea.  I shared with them the principle that "Anything thrown on Earth, will stay on Earth, they will not be thrown to the Moon or planet Mars". They will remain with us. 

If not balanced well, it will collapse.

To some, the oarfish washing in Antique can be an ominous sign-giving the impression that somthing bad is going to happen. We will lose nothing if we are warned ahead of time.

PJ Aranador is a graduate of Biological Sciences from the University of the Philippines. He was the past consultant of Go Green Philippines with projects on upland and marine conservations in Cebu City. He is one of the current consultants to the United States Agency for International Development Advancing Philippine Competitiveness (COMPETE)on key industries (Tourism, Agribusiness, Manufacturing) Component.  He was the design consultant on sustainable and green manufacturing for MSMES for the Iloilo Provincial Government projects on Northern Iloilo Local Economic Development (LED) with DTI-Iloilo.  His advocacy for green and sustainable design for better life in communities by helping his own people made him return in residency in Iloilo City.

SUSTAINABILITY programme in Boracay in full swing

Having been a business-owner, professional service provider, events organizer, local tourist and local resident rolled into one in Boracay Island for more than 12 years, I have experienced the transformation of one of the world’s best beach destinations to what it is today.

 

Even as far back as I was a student in Iloilo City, my classmates and I would pack our weekend bags to go to the island just to climb coconut trees and walk in the dark at night under a full moon.

 

The scenario now is the coconut trees have no more fruits having been cropped so they will not hit a sun bathing tourist. And one will have to walk in fancy blazing lights at night instead. But there is nothing wrong with these. Man evolves. So does our man-made environment. The greater problem is how sustainable the island will be because nature has always remained pure.

Today, Boracay is bursting with people and infrastructure. As a businessman myself, we see growth brought about by these burst of numbers as good opportunities for our market. 

Yet as we enter the green and sustainable economy, we need to re-invent our thinking and ways of doing things--- ultimately get our fingers dipped into the salad dressing and licked it with our fingers.  Boracay is just doing that. Like any center of growth it has to manage itself. As lonely planet mantra says “ Just don’t stand there, say something. “ Boracay is saying something today.

 With diverse interests and mind-set topped with ego, to orchestrate people who are in business in Boracay in contrast with transient tourists of various races, income and needs in an island is not an easy job.  Plus, projects in the Philippines are normally co-terminus with a government official or its entities, adds up to the enormous task.

When urbanization has become too big and too fast to be manageable because it was not planned correctly right in the beginning, the work becomes harder. It is more difficult to renovate than to construct. Ask your carpenter.

Boracay Foundation, Inc. (BFI) was organized to synchronize and align multiple directions of minds and actions in the island into consolidation and collaboration. Create a single movement. There will always be businesses in Boracay who will be indifferent though.

The irony in Boracay is that most of the big businesses, there are exceptions,   are the ones who are hard to get and live with. They become hearers than listeners. The small entrepreneurs are more the latter.

 With Sen. Franklin Drilon

 South Korea Ambassador to the Philippines Lee Hyuk

BFI President Jony Salme, South Korea Ambassador to the Philippines Lee Hyuk, BFI Chairman Henry O. Chusuey. Sen. Franklin Drilon, Sen. Cynthia Villar,Aklan Governor Florencio Miraflores.

The inductees

At the recent induction of the BFI officers and Board of Trustees, I was a listener. My business in Boracay is miniscule. As I expect,  any developments in tourism business today tucks in its arm the buzz words ---responsibility and sustainability. Boracay is no exception. It was, indeed, the pivotal topic for many who were to speak.

Henry O. Chusuey, Chairman of BFI for so many years of its 16 years in existence talked about the  beach management improvement in the island. Indeed, the report validates the strict rules, among others,  on smoking, garbage collection and segregation at the beach front. This is a foremost positive transformation one will see in the island. 

But of course, it is not yet perfect as the interior land mass has so much garbage just dumped by irresponsible business owners and residents, too, mostly migrants. This is where community training Chusuey said can be helpful..

As a prime mover in Boracay hotel industry, Chusuey has experienced the ups and downs of Boracay including   the coliform crisis in the island. Yet, rain or shine, peak or lean season, he never gave up Boracay according to Sen. Drilon.This is noble. 

We all know, environmental issues are never isolated. Nature is just like that, like a human body system that a mere toothache will paralyze the whole body and one may not be able to function at all. Either one becomes too ill for a long time or recover quickly. Others will just die. Chusuey and his business stayed on and survived.

BFI President Jony Salme reported on the 1.2 million tourists annually in Boracay last year and expected to grow at  1.5 million next year. He said the island is pressured to cope up.

For example, the main road is congested and the new circumferential road is on construction, except there are property owners who will not give the right of way as mentioned by Gov. Joeben Miraflores in his talk. Businessmen who are hearers than listeners.

Salme also shared  the commendations to BFI by the League of Corporate Foundations' (LCF) at the 12th annual Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Expo when he was invited as guest speaker amongst the Presidents/Chairmen of Aboitiz Foundation, San Miguel Foundation, Shell Pilipinas Foundation, ABS CBN Foundation, Lopez Group of Companies Foundation, Ayala Foundation and  GMA Foundation.

South Korea Ambassador to the Philippines Lee Hyuk was a good choice to induct the officers as South Koreans registers the highest number of tourists in the country. Formerly assigned in Japan and China, he was able to share his experiences with developmental growth in the tourism industry.

After the affair, I had the chance to talk with him about my experiences in South Korea where the marketing, design , development and the manufacturing industry embrace the academe—where the high school and college students partake in creating awareness towards nation building.

He said by all means I have to write him because I asked for idea exchange in the same manner I was invited at the Philippine-South Korean Design forum organized by DTI-CITEM last year. I am establishing  a  community-oriented school  as inspired with what I saw in Daegu, South Korea. The school is now  in full swing construction in Iloilo City.

It will be the first international school for design in the region which will offer courses in green and social design, environmental space planning, heritage interior design and architecture, green resort and urban planning design, community arts and crafts, among others. All for our next generation to get ready for their turn. Sustainability will be a future science when taught at the academe so the so-called "demand generation" will develop systems for all to practice and follow.

Senator Cynthia Villar, whose husband’s father is from Iloilo, was a surprise speaker. She briefly talked about her undertaking with green sustainable projects which is part of the group I work with as designer for the Metro Manila Development Authority livelihood project dubbed as Crafts Ecology as pioneered by DTI-CITEM. It aims to build entrepreneurships in artisanal crafts in urban Manila.

While the room was filled with Ilonggos, many of whom invested in Boracay, the guest of honor and keynote speaker  Senator Franklin Drilon, also from Iloilo, was the whistle blower.

 

He was in his element with firm words of encouragement to BFI and the local government units. His talk was like painting vivid colors to listeners as he illustrate how Iloilo river in 2011 was stinky and dirty nobody dare to go near the river.

 

Today, Iloilo river is in the running as contender to be cleanest river in the world! And there are only four in the globe. One in the Philippines, mind you. ( My past blog on Iloilo River Click Here http://pjaranador.blogspot.com/2013/06/living-river-in-iloilo-city.html )

 

Vivid pictures of the sparkling Iloilo river created bi-polar images in my mind in comparison to the dying creeks and in-land bodies of water in Boracay. Today, the “dead-forest” of Boracay which was a swampy area is dirty and filled with man-made structures. It stink, too.  Same for the creek behind D’Mall in which water was trapped and can no longer get out of its natural flow into the sea. It also stink.

 

I remember we had a photo shoot with a team of New York based production at the sterling condition of the “dead forest “ swamp of Boracay 10 years ago. It was pristine that it could have been one of Boracay’s attractions. Now, it is gone. It paints only a picture of a destroyed nature in my mind---brown and murky.

 

Sen. Drilon illustrated an example about a barbeque park along the Iloilo river which refused to get out of the river bank. But because of political will, he was able to eject it out.

Iloilo river is a 50 kilometer stretch and was cleaned up in a mean two years. The White Beach, the main tourism beach in Boracay, is about four to six  kilometers long only. So it can be cleaned up easily in comparison to Iloilo river. No question about it, this has been done at the beach with flying colors, except for irresponsible event organizers who leaves the beach filthy, one of those I blogged last summer.

BFI admits, implementation needs more work. While the front beach has been cleaned up, what we do not see are the small bodies of water in-land including miniscule creeks that are dead or deteriorating. Perhaps the reason that the island becomes flooded is because the water tributaries are already blocked by concrete.

Water is important in sustainable tourism. Only 4% of earth’s water is potable. The good news is, Boracay recently opened its multi-million waste water sewage treatment plant, through a public and private partnership with Ayala firm called Boracay Island Water, Co. It increase the island water capacity to 230% which in return advances its environmental compliances.  

But the bodies of in-land water in Boracay need to be examined in its environmental degradation.

Sen. Drilon among the speakers was blunt. He had three points. First, uncontrolled urbanization. Second, squabbles over land ownerships. Third, encroachment in critical/ protected areas. And he challenged those in government that this can be addressed by political will. The young dynamic Malay mayor John Yap was there  and certainly he was listening. So was Vice-Governor Calizo whom I have worked with so many community projects in the past.

Iloilo being a formdidable leader and example in the region, has many models to be shared with its neighbors including Boracay. Sen. Drilon shared inspiration on the 8 billion Jalaur river project in IIoilo which will not only solve the water management problem in the province but will also become one of the future sustainable tourist destination as it will create a 800 hectares of lake up there in the mountain ( I think in Dingle). Still, it will irrigate 300 hectares of rice land. Again, pictures in my mind become as vivid. Here is an image of making the life of business within in communities easier while translating it to sustainable tourism.

As Sen. Drilon was coloring my mind with the Iloilo projects, my other mind was in Coron as the we had a recent forum on conservation, social responsibility, sustainable tourism for Coron and Calamianes Islands.

 

 I was tasked to talk on sustainable design in resorts, hotels and land/waterscape for which I stand firm for  a distinct Filipino point of view for structures with a sense of place and origin based on culture and tradition while fostering Filipino heritage.  Buildings and structures should embrace Filipino sustainable design as well  made of sustainable materials and with renewable energy. There must be restrain to borrow the design of other countries  in our hotels and resorts as we can not borrow our Filipino soul. We say one will know when one is in Bali when he is in Bali. One is in Boracay when he is in Boracay.  

 

While many Boracay investors are also putting up resorts in Coron, the Coron house must be set in order first. The town of Coron is in chaos and with the sudden influx of tourism it has to cope up. Then, my mind jumped to Gigantes Island in Iloilo in which I was told, we need to protect the island as well before it becomes a nightmare as tourists come to destroy it than to preserve it.

 

Illegal settlers, like those in Iloilo river, were resettled in impressive relocation sites. That is an incentive. One thousand of them, said Sen. Drilon. One or two hotel which is out of its way in Boracay is not difficult to remove, and so they were done by Mayor John Yap. The senator said, if only we respect boundaries, we have no problems at all. That add a zest of color to my mind when I always say Filipinos are very bad at zoning.

 

Boracay will survive. Perhaps surpass its expectations because it has to set a world standard for having been voted the best beach in the world in 1012 by Travel and Leisure Magazine.

 

When I worked with  El Ministerio de Comercio Exterior y Turismo ( MINCETUR or the Ministry for External Commerce and Tourism  in Peru for  3 years), I had the opportunity to work with people in their government. In the Philippines, we are always whining. Always pointing our fingers to our government when something goes wrong.

 In Peru, I noticed they  believe in the co-existence of the private sector with government. Their tourism industry works well in this mentality. Political will is faith in creating collaboration and harmony in society. It is like the Latinos mimic the flora and fauna in the rainforest, the Amazon and the Cordilleras---each must have a symbiotic relationship so their own kind will survive.

I was able to talk to Senator Drilon quickly, sharing with him my social design projects in Iloilo city and the province for which he said I must go to Mayor Jed Mabilog—which again painted my mind with some bursts of  colorful notes. I shared with him the work I do for the Ati community in Boracay which I mentioned he may visit one day. He smiled. I thought it was just saying yes, one day soon.

By the end of the program, my white canvas in my mind was painted with bright colors of  hope for Boracay and the rest of the islands we have in the Philippines.