Environmental Conservation and Action (Coral Reefs in The Philippines) 2021

The Issue

Introduction

Coral Reefs has a big part in ecosystems it serves as a habitat for large varieties of marine life, including various sponges, oysters, clams, crabs, sea stars, sea urchins, and many species of fish, coral reefs also protects coastal areas by reducing the power of waves hitting the coast, and also provides a crucial source of income for millions of people around the world

We want to protect and conserve these Coral Reefs because the destruction of these Coral Reefs will trigger hunger and poverty, once the corals are dead, the reefs will also die, destroying marine life spawning and feeding grounds resulting decline of fish populations

Vision - To have a healthier coral reef by the year 2050 instead of reefs being in danger in the year 2050

Mission - To conserve and protect coral reefs with a dedication to stopping global warming.

Purpose

This project aims to protect and conserve all coral reefs in the Philippines. The Philippines lies within the Coral Triangle, which includes more than 75% of all coral species and 35% of the world’s coral reefs. The reefs support extraordinary biodiversity including more than 400 species of coral and more than 900 species of reef fish. The Philippines has the second largest coral reefs in Southeast Asia, it is 10,000 square miles long or 26,000 square kilometers.

In 2003 the Philippines ranked 11th among the top fish producing countries in the world with the production of 2.63 million tonnes of fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and aquatic plants. The Philippines has tremendous natural resources for fishing, tourism, and storm protection valued at more than $2 billion annually. This means that the fishing industry has a big impact on the Philippines economy and Filipino residents.

A big threat factor to coral reefs is human activity, this includes fishing, coastal development, farming, and fish farming. Destructive fishing practices are the largest contributor to reef degradation. Even though the act of poison fishing and blast fishing or dynamite fishing is banned, enforcement guarding the reefs is lacking. Fishers use cyanide to stun fish making them easier to catch but if it is used frequently it can kill corals.

The second threat to the reefs is global warming when ocean temperature rises it can trigger coral bleaching, corals get their food from the algae that live in the coral’s tissue and when coral bleaching happens, these corals expel the algae making the coral turn completely white. Although corals can survive the bleaching event they cannot handle two forms of stress which are one, human activity, and two, global warming.

Continued acidification of the ocean as it absorbs our carbon emissions like burning fossil fuels poses another threat to the corals and other sea animals that need calcium carbonate to build shells or skeletons. When the ocean becomes so acidic that calcium carbonate in the mineral form that corals use will become unavailable to corals for building reefs. Studies have shown that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide would reduce coral calcification by more than 30 percent.

The loss of coral reefs in the Philippines is going to be another form of global warming, because as the corals die the number of species supported by the reef declines, which will lead to local fish species going extinct, which will lead the fishing industry in the Philippines to plummet.

Description

We would like to first start at Tubbataha Reefs because it is known in the world for its extraordinary biodiversity, abundant marine life, and breathtaking drop-offs into the open ocean, it covers 130,028ha of high-quality marine habitats containing three atolls and a large area of deep-sea, Tubbataha Reefs is also the breeding grounds of marine life in the sulu sea, they go there, they breed, and they swim out into the ocean. Protecting this reef will greatly help sustain the marine life in the sulu sea which means it will support the fisheries outside its boundaries.

Tubbataha Reef has been discovered in the late 1970s it is home to 374 species of coral and almost 500 species of fish. Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park also Protects one of the few remaining colonies of breeding seabirds in the region, the reefs support almost 90% of all the coral species in the Philippines, and it is within the Coral Triangle, a global focus for coral biological diversity, and Unesco inscribed it as a World Heritage Site at the year 1993

To attain the goal of protecting Tubbataha reefs properly we must first build an organization that will be the foundation of this project. The current organization on Tubbataha is facing multiple problems the first one is the Facility.

We will build a facility where rangers would live safely and provide them boats, although fishing is prohibited in Tubbataha some fishers are able to pass by the rangers because Tubbataha is big and a few boats aren’t enough for the rangers to guard the area.

The next one would be to protect the breeding seabirds, the bird islet is losing trees putting the seabird population at risk of homelessness due to being exposed to natural disasters such as typhoons with waves and wind. So the project we would do is to build nesting structures for the birds.

We will also build another facility where marine biologists can artificially grow corals from raceways or from the coral nurseries for when calamities hit the coral reefs there would be corals that can be planted through the reef.

This can be done with the support of multiple organizations like the DENR, ACB, Provincial GOVT., Phil Navy, and Phil Coastguard.

In diving season 2019 the number of visitors that visited Tubbataha reached a total of 3,475 generating revenue of Php18.7M. The revenues and the support of the organizations are enough to maintain the project for years in Tubbataha.

Support

Boats - Php 75,667,980

Facilities cost - Php 2,000,000,000

- Salary

- Upkeep

- Operating expenses

- Building expense

- Land

Contact

For more information, you may contact the following:

Cellphone no.: 09125834669

Email Address: reefprotectorsph@gmail.com