RP youth blog on ocean crisis

03 July 2007
By Ephraim Aguilar
Inquirer Southern Luzon

MASBATE CITY—FOUR HIGH SCHOOL STUdents here represented the country in the first youth-to-youth online global forum on the planet’s ocean crisis, which was highlighted at the United Nations Plaza in New York City on June 5 on the observance of World Environment Day.

The Philippine bloggers at the “Fishes Feed Us” forum were Ralph Cedie Fabon, 13; Kristine Yentyl Esber, 14; Soccii Nenotchka Tuason, 15, and Philip Joseph Alarcon, 15. All are students at the Masbate National Comprehensive High School and leaders of the I Love the Ocean Movement initiated by the Coastal Resource Management and Interpretive Center (CRMIC).

They joined the exchange of ideas along with youths from India, Malaysia and the United States on the global fish crisis.

The blog entries of Alarcon and Esber were also chosen as monologues that were presented at the UN Plaza event.


The “Fishes Feed Us” blog (www.oneocean.org/fishblog) is a project of the Arts and Science Collaborations Inc., a nongovernment organization based in New York City devoted to “exploring the intersections of arts and science.”

The online youth dialogue hoped to put a human face on the destruction of the marine ecosystem and encourage young people to become ocean stewards.

Esber, a third year student, said they had immersed themselves in the community to prepare for the online dialogue.

“We exposed ourselves to the communities in the province that rely mainly on fishing as a means of livelihood, and we talked with the fishermen’s children,” she said.

Esber said this gave her a good overview of how the children think their families benefit from Masbate’s rich marine resources.

Tuason, also a third year high school student, learned from her interviews that much has improved in terms of preserving the ocean corals, the habitat of fish, since this city implemented its coastal resource management program in February 2000. She learned there had been zero dynamite-fishing rate in the city in the past years.

She reported that there were already two marine sanctuaries in the city—the Buntod and Bugsayon reefs.

Seas at risk

Asked to imagine themselves in the fish’s place, the participants were asked: “What is happening to our homes—where we live, find food, have babies?”

“I found myself swimming and living not in a sea anymore but in a canal of garbage, trash and toxic materials. It’s so suffocating, so weakening, and as I tried to strive for life, I already prepared myself for the death that was just right behind me,” Alarcon stated in one of his entries that earned comments from the foreign participants.

He told the Inquirer that, while the seas were clean outside of Masbate’s urban centers, the government had to do something about the garbage polluting the waters near the city market site.

Added Fabon: “The mangroves that are supposed to grow abundantly strain the wastes from getting into the sea to pollute the habitat of marine creatures. They must be preserved.”

What was needed, said Alarcon, was discipline and the willingness of people to change the situation.

Esber said taking care of the earth is a human responsibility, adding that if she were a fish, she would ask, “I serve as food for them (the people), but why do they destroy my habitat and kill me unjustly?”

Award-winning efforts

Masbate City’s coastal resource management effort was one of the recipients of this year’s Saringaya Awards, given by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources to individuals and entities in the field of environmental protection and sustainable development of natural resources.

The CRMIC, established in 2003, also received two prestigious Anvil Awards in 2005: The Anvil Award of Excellence for Institutional and Corporate Programs in the category of public affairs management and communications in environmental protection, and the Anvil Award of Merit for public relations.

Agriculturist Esperanza Danao, CRMIC coordinator-designate, said the CMRIC’s massive youth-targeted campaign on ocean protection is the first of its kind in the country.

An expanding crusade

“We coordinate with different campuses and invite students on ecotours. In day-care centers, we conduct story-telling sessions and show films to children. For us, this is the fastest way to massively disseminate information on environment preservation,” Danao said.

The CRMIC has involved the communities in coastal cleanups and has deputized fish wardens and junior fish wardens, who are trained in integrated coastal management.

Some of the fish wardens are former illegal fishers redeemed to become instruments of environment protection.

Other towns in Masbate like Batuan, San Jacinto and Aroroy have started to adopt their own coastal resource management programs.

Batuan, a fifth-class municipality at the southern end of Ticao Island, is home to the 168-hectare Bongsanglay Mangrove Forest Reserve. Here can be found a 125-year-old piapi, said to be the largest mangrove tree in the region.