Southern Leyte Coral Reef Conservation Project: April update
Added to website: 02 May 2007
Project Brief
Project Aim
The Southern Leyte Coral Reef Conservation Project (SLCRCP) is a six-year collaborative project (2002–2008), to survey the coral reefs of Sogod Bay. The programme provides training and conservation education opportunities for local Filipinos, as part of an integrated programme to develop local capacity and ensure the long-term protection and sustainable use of marine resources throughout the region.
Location
Sogod Bay, Southern Leyte, South-Eastern Philippines.
CCC Partners
CCC is working at the invitation of and in partnership with the Provincial Government of Southern Leyte and the Philippine Reef & Rainforest Conservation Foundation Inc (PRRCFI).
Marine Science Programme
Background: Our baseline surveying programme is designed to gather data about the biological and morphological standing of Sogod Bay. These data are combined with information on human and natural impacts on the reefs, along with oceanographic data, to ultimately produce a Geographical Information System ‘map’ of the various habitats of the bay. It is like a ‘stock-take’ of the current marine resources, which is being produced to provide policymakers and concerned institutions with information necessary to effectively manage those resources. To date, the northern end of Sogod Bay has been surveyed, and the remainder of the project will concentrate on the south and Limasawa Island. If you would like more information on our surveying rationale or methodology, please don’t hesitate to contact our Project Scientist.As stated above, we can only be happy with the output of our survey work this month. Although we had an almost total change over of volunteers during the month, we were able to keep our boat Sanga busy going out for survey most of the month. We did not match the exceptional result of last month, but still, we crossed again the line of 1km distance covered, with 1100m surveyed. All volunteers participated with enthusiasm to this result, and therefore deserve a big thank you. We are confident that we will be able to keep the pace also in the next month, possibly finishing several transects started on the Western Limasawa sector.
| Transect | Barangay | Site | Start Depth | Finish Depth |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B2701 | San Roque | Nr. MPA | 24.0 | 1.8 |
| B2702 | San Roque | Nr. MPA | 24.0 | 5.4 |
| B2703 | San Roque | Nr. MPA | 24.0 | 1.7 |
| B2704 | San Roque | Nr. MPA | 23.8 | 3.5 |
| B2705 | San Roque | Nr. MPA | 24.0 | 3.6 |
| B2706 | San Roque | Nr. MPA | 24.0 | 2.0 |
| B0537 | Tangka’an | Nr. MPA | 23.5 | 2.0 |
| B0107 | S. Limasawa | Nr. MPA | 24.0 | 3.7 |
| B2706 | San Roque | Nr. MPA | 24.0 | 1.8 |
ReefCheck
Background:Based at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), ReefCheck is the name of both the world’s largest coral reef monitoring network and of the common methodology used, allowing the comparison of results from various locations worldwide. Although less detailed than CCC’s baseline surveys, the ReefCheck method is effective for monitoring changes in reef health over time. CCC is proud to be a major contributing member of ReefCheck. Check out their site at www.ReefCheck.org
We planned to carry out some Reef Check surveys, but we did not succeed since we preferred to take advantage of the summer season to survey the reefs of Limasawa Island, who proved to be quite hard work during the rainy months. However, CCC believes in the importance of this world wide program, and wants to continue to contribute as one of the main contributors to Reef Checks ongoing efforts to assess the world’s coral reefs.
Education and Community Projects
On the 11th April, I had the pleasure to attend the eight Costal Resources Management Network meeting, organized in Maasin by Hon. Eva Abad, the Head of PENRMO. This meeting, organized quarterly, is intended as occasion for everyone involved in the management of coastal resources to coordinate and network their activities, reducing eventual overlaps. The meeting was very useful, and possible collaborations in the near future have been outlined.
This last April was characterized by the School summer holidays and the intense political campaigning for the election coming up in two weeks time. With all schools being closed, it was difficult for us to organize the traditional Open Day. Therefore, we thought that instead of inviting the kids to our camp, we could visit them ourselves in the near Barangays. A good occasion to do so was the Dive In To Earth Day the April 22nd. We decided to make this event the highlight of our community work for this month, and therefore we started with the preparation and some parallel activities early in the month.
Dive In To Earth Day is an international Earth Day celebration that mobilizes environmentally conscious communities, park managers, dive shops and other marine lovers around the world to take a stand in protecting our endangered water world and coastal resources. It has become a huge driving force for environmental awareness and has involved thousands of participants in active marine conservation. In the past seven years, Dive In organizers have held 2,000 marine conservation events in 117 countries worldwide, removing trash, educating children and their communities, supporting marine protected areas, and much more.
Our aim for this celebration was to go further than carrying out a coastal clean up, taking the opportunity to disseminate one more time much information about the importance of coastal resources and their sustainable management, trough simple but hopefully effective activities and promoting day-to-day solutions. Our main focus was to start an awareness campaign on waste disposal and management. At the present, too much domestic waste, ranging from cans to plastic bags, still end up in the sea, negatively affecting the ecosystem. As a first step, we provided the Municipality of Padre Burgos with 5 sets of trash bins for organic and non biodegradable waste, and more should be ready soon. All the bins were painted by the pupils of the Kinderhilfe orphanage that visited us last month for the open day. The kids did an amazing work turning standard trash bins into an explosion of colour and joy; we would like to thank them as well as the Kinderhilfe owner Mr. Schneidt and his staff for the enthusiastic contribution to our project.
A second, important step in preparation for the Dive In To Earth Day was the first meeting of the women from 3 different Barangay. The aim of this meeting was to emphasise the importance of waste management on the sustainability of their coastal resources and also to involve the women more in the work to be done in the region. Over 60 women attended to listen to a presentation with some general reef facts and waste management tips. The meeting then moved into a discussion, with many of the ladies having a lot to say for what they thought could be done. The end result was, the presiding board member agreeing with bringing back a sanitary inspector to make sure that households were respecting the laws with regards to waste management. Another positive outcome was the ladies expressing a keen interest in attending an open day at Ampo in order to learn more facts about their reef and also to try snorkelling. All in all a great success, with a number of the women being a great help on Dive into Earth day. Huge thanks to our local counterpart, Grace Quiton, for facilitating the communication and helping moderate the discussion.
As last preparation step, all staff and many volunteer contributed in the preparation of educational stalls, with several posters and interactive games set up for the community, targeting all age groups. At this point, we were ready to go!
The day started in the morning with a beach clean up in five different location correspondent to five different Barangays: St. Sofia, Poblacion, Cantutang, Lungsodaan and Buenavista. The precious help of the Baranguay Captains and their councils in mobilizing the community made it possible to have roughly 400 people helping their self, collecting all sort of rubbish (35 full big trash bags collected!!!) together with our volunteer and staff. We were very pleased to see this amount of people welcoming our invitation, and we would like to thank them all for participating.
In the early afternoon, we invited everyone to follow up the activities set up at the sport arena of P. Burgos, where together with some music and some free food for the children who helped out in the morning, we presented our stalls. The topics ranged from a outline of our survey work, information about Marine Protected Areas to Facts and Figures of the Reef and of course a waste management stall where, beside informative posters, our bins where presented to the community, immediately involving the kids in how to use them properly. The presence of the Reef Rangers of St. Roque National School presenting poster of their survey carried out last month was a further pleasure.
The people showed genuine interest for our posters and shows, observing and asking many questions that we were pleased to answer, rewarding us all for the efforts!
We can happily say that the whole day was a success, and we would like to thank all people who helped in organizing it. First of all the Mayor of P.Burgos, Hon Rimmon E. Borces for providing the sport arena and free logistic; the Barangays Captains for their effort in mobilizing the community, a sign of their commitment in protecting the environment. Finally, a special thank goes to Engineer Emmanuel G. Gulay, whom help was crucial to set up the event.
Closely related with the Dive In To Earth Day, CCC has been invited from Sir Dag Navarette on the 24th to paint a mural on the shoreline of Maasin, where dozens of Agencies, Schools and NGO’s transformed a long concrete wall into a colourful message calling for respect and protection of our environment. We were very happy to have our slot and, with some artistic volunteers, we tried our best!!!
Later on this month, we decided to resume another educational program set up by previous staff members. On Saturday 28 and Sunday 29, 29 Elementary Schools Teachers coming from all S. Leyte attended our training program. Again, over the two days we did our best to pass on as much information as possible about the marine resources, so important for the livelihood of the region. The training was a combination of lectures and practical workshop and games, many of them intended to be easily replicated with the pupils in their relative schools. Teachers are definitely a very sensible target group, and the training, quite intensive especially on Sunday, was a real pleasure, with the teachers happily getting stuck into the workshops showing motivation and much knowledge too. We provided each represented Municipality with a CD with all the teaching resources, and we believe this will help the teachers to set up similar workshops and games in their schools, for both students and why not, also for their colleagues!
This month we were also very happy to have on board one more local counterpart. This program aims to deliver capacity building to Filipinos eager to learn more about marine environment and committed to use the skills for the benefit of the Province in the future. Grace T. Quiton has been an exemplary counterpart for all these matters. Her presence was very appreciated from all volunteers, who had the occasion to learn more about this beautiful country and his people’s use and costumes. Further, as Project Scientist I was very glad to have her unconditioned availability for any kind of help our community work could ever need, ranging from translations to ideas and advices in making our activities more effective. We want to wish Grace all the best for the future, hoping to see her soon surveying the marine resources of S. Leyte and continue contribute to raise the awareness towards natural resources.
Interesting/Unusual Sightings
Our house reef at Ampo is always a pleasure to dive on, last month a large barracuda was often sighted. This month we have seen a 1 metre long Bumphead Parrotfish on many occasions. There are also many juvenile Parrotfish, Butterflyfish and wrasses inhabiting the reef at this time, many of which are beautiful colours and often do not resemble the adults. With so many juveniles around, including a handful of groupers, this can only be a positive indication of the health of the reef.
Coral Cay Conservation provides resources to help sustain livelihoods and alleviate poverty through the protection, restoration and management of coral reefs and tropical forests.p>
