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DAVAO CITY—Heavy
siltation of the entire Davao City coast may muddle the
plan of the city and the Department of Tourism to develop
what may be a world-class wreck dive site of World War 2
Japanese ships just off its southern coast.
The
siltation is so bad that “from up an airplane, you can see
the long stream of chocolate-colored water along the
coastline of the city,” said Carlos Munda Jr., a diving
instructor, who chased the history of one of the supply
ships that sank off
Talomo Bay,
just within a depth of 200 feet.
Munda said
visibility was low around the wreck of Sagami Maru, a
supply ship of the Japanese Navy, whose unloading of war
materiél off Talomo Bay appeared incomplete when it was
sunk by a
US
warship in November 1942.
“You could
still find motorcycles, even plates, which at that time
were very important for the Japanese Army,” he said.
However, he said, “Some of these items have been salvaged
and a lot of others have been buried deep in mud from
siltation.”
From a
distance of five meters, one could not see clearly anymore
due to siltation, Munda said.
The
Department of Tourism (DOT) has marked Talomo Bay as
another development program, eying the market of divers
interested in adventures, visiting and exploring undersea
wreckage. Sonia Garcia, DOT director for the Davao region,
said Talomo Bay’s wreckage “could be another big tourism
attraction.”
Councilor
Leonardo Avila III, chairman of the city council’s panel
on environment, said he will talk to barangay officials in
hopes of persuading them to consider improving their
barangay and imposing a user’s fee for any diving
exploration in the bay.
“Those
divers who engage in salvaging whatever items [they may
find] in the wreckage may be hired to become guide divers
instead,” he said.
Avila estimated there could be about six or seven more ships
lining up in the depths of
Talomo
Bay.
Salvaging
by local divers is occasionally perilous; one of these
divers was killed last week while trying to partition a
WW2 vintage bomb found in the wreckage, meant to be sold
as scrap metal.
In the
last three decades, local salvaging operations have
resurfaced parts or engines of Japanese warplanes, but
usually ended up in scrap-metal shops.
Munda said
officials cannot say if the wreckage contained bombs,
although many of the cargo still being unearthed are
motorcycles, trucks and china ware.
“We found
crates in the lower deck of the ship, and we suspect that
these could be bombs,” he said. “These need specialized
diving, using specialized gases and skills because these
are already at [depths] of 300 feet or lower.”
He said
that if the government were unable to solve the serious
siltation of the coasts, “then it’s better to let these
wreckage be sold in the junk shops than hope to make it
earn as a tourism site.”
Avila batted for renewed efforts to contain the erosion,
agreeing with Munda that siltation was due to the erosion
of the land and soil being drained into the rivers before
ending up in the coastal areas.
A program
in the 1990s to plant trees and shrubs within five meters
of the riverbank of the Davao River remained
unimplemented, though. | 
