Angel C. Alcala’s contributions to the biological sciences span the terrestrial and marine realms.
His published works since 1955 cover a wide range of species, including crocodiles, corals, crabs, bats, mollusks, fishes, turtles, sea urchins, frogs, giant clams, lizards, and their habits and habitats. In terrestrial biology, he is credited for the discovery of 50 species of frogs and lizards.
However, he is probably most recognized for his research on marine protected areas (MPAs) — sea areas where fishing is prohibited as a way to conserve marine biodiversity and rejuvenate fisheries.
Alcala has studied MPAs since 1973. He was the first biologist to establish an experimental MPA in the Philippines, at Sumilon Island, with the idea of increasing the fish catch of small-scale fishers. This occurred at a time when reef fisheries resources were beginning to decline due to unsustainable fishing practices, and increasing human pressures.
His pioneering work involved monitoring the daily fish catch of about 100 fishers who fished the coral reef surrounding Sumilon. He demonstrated that as long as the MPA (25 percent of total reef area) was protected from fishing, fishers had sustainable fish yields outside the MPA (75 percent of total reef area).
Protection of the Sumilon MPA, however, failed after 10 years, resulting in dramatic declines in fish catch (Alcala and Russ, 1990 ICES J. Mar. Sci. 47:40-47).
This led him to hypothesize that sustainable fish yields during the period of protection occurred because of “spillover” or net export of adult fishes from the MPA to reef areas open to fishing.
Further studies at Apo Island (not far from Sumilon), where he helped set up the first community-managed MPA in the Philippines in 1982, confirmed this hypothesis (seven papers published between 1996 and 2006).
The studies that Alcala initiated at Sumilon Island and Apo Island went beyond investigating spillover. In 1983, Alcala, together with Garry Russ (James Cook University, Australia) started in these two islands what would become one of the longest-running marine environmental monitoring programs in the world.
The program continues to this day, and has so far produced 17 papers (1996 to 2018) that have demonstrated the complex responses of coral reef fish and benthic communities to protection from fishing, as well as to climate-induced disturbances such as typhoons and heat stress that result in massive coral mortality.
The lessons from this monitoring program greatly contribute to understanding how coral reefs and the ecosystems services that they provide to humans can be managed amidst global climate change.
Alcala’s work on MPAs have helped to change the laws under which marine resources are managed in the Philippines. His research at Sumilon and Apo produced some of the best available evidence that no-take MPAs, protected and managed by local communities, can play a key role in restoring biodiversity and enhancing depleted fisheries. The ecological and social lessons from these islands served as models for an expansion of MPAs across the Philippines, now numbering upwards of 1,600.
This expansion of MPAs has contributed substantially to a major shift in national policy, where management of marine resources devolved from a centralized government bureaucracy to the municipal governments and local communities.
Alcala’s life’s work on MPAs demonstrates that we can do something to help nature bounce back from man’s negative impacts, and strive for a balance that would allow both nature and man to thrive. In the coral reef realm, especially in poorer countries, this balance becomes all the more important as the ecological responses to man’s impacts are directly linked to food and livelihood security for millions of people.
In 1992, Alcala’s devotion to public service through science and environmental conservation was recognized by the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation (regarded as the Nobel Prize counterpart of Asia). In 1999, Alcala was also jointly awarded (with Garry Russ) the prestigious Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation. He was the first Filipino to receive this award. In 2014, Alcala was conferred the title and rank of National Scientist by the President of the Republic of the Philippines.
