Underwater cable seen as threat to ‘butanding’

By Ephraim Aguilar, A17
Legazpi City

THREATENING A MULTIMILLION-PESO TOUR-ism jewel, a submarine cable planned to be installed by a giant telecommunications firm in Donsol, Sorsogon, the whale shark capital of the world, is eyed with suspicion.

Seeking to expand its network, Globe Telecom plans to install this year a 164-kilometer underwater cable from Donsol town to Calbayog, Northern Samar.

Local tourism officials are worried that this network expansion project would affect the safety of the butanding.

“We cannot risk the whale shark habitat in Donsol to some foreign object planned to be installed there,” Maria Ong-Ravanilla, Bicol tourism regional director, says.

Globe, in a letter addressed to Tourism Secretary Joseph Ace Durano, said the project is part of a five-segment cable from Southern Luzon to Northern Mindanao, which will improve the reliability and availability of the country’s mobile communication technology.

The cable’s jump-off point from the tip of Southern Luzon to Visayas is Barangay Dancalan in Donsol. This village serves as jump-off point for tourists who engage in whale shark interaction.

Ong-Ravanilla says Globe has asked for an endorsement from the Department of Tourism so it can get an environmental compliance certificate (ECC) from the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

She says the DOT will issue an endorsement for Globe if it gets an approval from the Donsol mayor and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an agency protecting whale sharks in the town.

“What we need from Globe is an environmental impact assessment report,” she says.

Construction materials

She says Globe has been summoned by the Sorsogon provincial board for an inquiry but none of its local managers are authorized to speak for the company.

Ong-Ravanilla says there have been reports from residents in Barangay Dancalan that Globe had already delivered construction materials there.

“The villagers saw PVC pipes, which they said, were owned by Globe. What we do not want to happen here is for (Globe) to start its construction before the issuance of an ECC,” she says.

The WWF, an agency implementing whale shark conservation guidelines in Donsol, is cautious about Globe’s expansion project.

David David, lead coordinator of the whale shark tracking project of WWF in Donsol, said they are researching for the specifics of the project to determine the possible effects of the submarine cables on whale shark habitat.

In the 2008 season, WWF recorded 114 whale sharks through its photo-identification technology, which determines whale sharks individually by means of their spots, he says.

The spots of whale shark are unique to every creature, just like human fingerprints, he says.

Tourism industry

Jay Christie, project director from the Ericsson Telecommunications, one of the project contractors, says that the company has taken note of the tourism activities in Donsol and will fully coordinate with tourism officials.

Donsol is one of the country’s top three ecotourism sites. Based on WWF data, Donsol’s butanding interaction contributes more than P50 million to the economy annually.

The town’s attraction was declared as the “best animal encounter in Asia” by Time magazine in 2004.

Tourism in Donsol has also pulled the town from being a fifth-class to a third-class municipality.

Butanding interaction activities in Donsol cover eight villages and tourists number more than 10,000 a season.