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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.
China would take everything everywhere and put nothing back
does anyone realise that the current temperature of the globe is the LOWEST it has been for hundredes of years, THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS, ITS ALL A LIE,
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We are determined to make a real impact by supporting local actions, join the MW crew!
Akjohnmahaney I know where this ocean is back home!
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Why are so many highly qualified Marine Biologists without work?! How regulated are NGOs who mostly employ volunteers who have to pay for experience... instead of employing paid marine biologists to do accurate scientific research... we need scientists not gap year students!
OK
Beautiful
Destructive fishing can kill,the life in the ocean,ALL over.
Add to that the pollution.
Make lawmakers go to class and pass by 75% or better before office....You have trained profesionals!
During the pandemic when everyone was still at home nature and flora and fauna could slowly recover now you still have learned nothing and you keep destroying everything greed greed and more greed
It really bothers me to see tones of dried seahorses sold in open air markets in the Philippines. While I'm the topic and in the region of where sealife cruelty exists, is the dolphin roundup still occurring in Japan. They're rounded up in a cove and killed. As in Italy and tuna
$cience
The past dynamite fishing didn't really help, but that seems to have pretty much been stamped out now.
JellyfishInvasion Sargassum