If only fishers, local government officials, and fishery agencies will listen to and believe scientific reports of reputable research biologists, the Philippines would have a surplus of harvestable fish in our coastal ecosystems! If only these people will follow our advice to set apart portions of coastal ecosystems (coral reefs, mangroves, and sea grass beds) to produce fish that will replenish overfished areas, our coastal communities can have sufficient fishery products to consume everyday–and more to sell for modest incomes!
But what is happening is that in many parts of the country, these productive ecosystems are destroyed or subjected to many forms of damage and disturbance causing them to degrade thus making them unproductive, to the detriment of the fishing communities.
Here I describe a marine reserve of coral reef so small (about a third of a hectare in area located in Antulang, Siit, Municipality of Siaton, Negros Oriental province) that one can hardly believe it can house 379 species (kinds) of fish for the whole reserve and numbering more than 2,000 individual fish per 500 square meters and weighing 108 tons per square kilometer after 3 years of protection from fishing! These records of fish productivity rival those of the two islands Garry Russ and I earlier studied in the Bohol Sea, the islands of Sumilon and Apo way back in the 1970s and the 1980s.
This report from Antulang, Siaton comes from the underwater survey of my friend, Dr. Arthur R. Bos of the Netherlands Center of Biodiversity, who is now at the Davao del Norte State College, Panabo City. Dr. Bos has compared his 2010-2011 findings with those of Portia Nillos-Kleiven and Brian Stockwell, both of SUAKCREM, Silliman University, in 2008 and 2009 and noted an increase in biomass of about 10% per year.
The people of Siaton should be thankful to Martin Jordan and Gena Dayon, both of whom established and maintained the no-take Dive Hub Marine Protected Area in Antulang, Siit, Siaton not without difficulty and problems. This protected reef attracts a number of tourists who love to see and photograph attractive reef fishes, some of which are found nowhere else in the world. Now that the benefits of this no-take marine reserve to the fishers of Siaton Municipality are apparent, I hope they accord the Dive Hub Marine Protected Area some respect for its effort in establishing the reserve.
But one may ask, what is great about these figures? I tell you they are significant because they indicate that by full protection of their habitats (coral reef), fish are allowed to grow bigger and being in large numbers in a limited space are forced to move outside the no-take marine reserve, where they enhance fisheries yields. I am not surprised if fishers are already experiencing bigger catches in areas outside this reserve–due the adult/juvenile spillover. Another form of spillover is larval spillover, and I am going to talk about this when our research at SUAKCREM yields results that we can share with our readers.
Aside from strict protection from fishing and other exploitative activities, the Dive Hub marine reserve sits on an ideal site, where fresh seawater is always following from the Pacific Ocean to the Sulu Sea and the fact that it is adjacent to a deep channel of the Bohol Sea, probably favoring the development of an upwelling that brings nutrients to the shallow waters. So human protective management and favorable oceanographic conditions form two important features for a successful or functional no-take marine reserve.
In summary, no-take marine reserves, if fully protected by the LGUs and local communities, will definitely improve fisheries and marine biodiversity in our coastal ecosystems and thus improve the quality of life of millions of Filipinos.