The Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (Bfar) on Tuesday appealed to the public to stop throwing plastics and other harmful pollutants in the country’s seas and oceans.
The attached agency of the Department of Agriculture (DA) made the appeal after a huge amount of foreign objects, mostly plastics and cellophane, were found in the stomach of a dead Cuvier’s beaked whale. The whale was found stranded along the coastline of Brarangay Cadunan in Mabini, Compostela Valley.
Personnel from Bfar and the local government tried to ferry the beached whale to deeper waters but it returned to shallow waters where its condition further deteriorated and eventually died.
“The DA-Bfar expresses regrets over this incident, which is somehow a result of improper waste disposal. We urge the public and concerned government entities to support the ‘Malinis at Masaganang Karagatan,’ a holistic program of the DA-BFAR, which would ensure that our seas and oceans are free of plastics and other harmful pollutants,” the Bfar said in a statement.
The Bfar said it will step up its monitoring and law enforcement efforts to prevent activities that threaten marine animals and Philippine seas.
The agency said its regional office in Davao City collected tissue samples for scientific determination of other possible causes of death of the stranded whale.
Bfar said the initial diagnosis is the ingestion of some 88 pounds of foreign objects of mostly plastics and cellophane. The agency said it is now preserving the animal’s remains which will be used for educational purposes.
According to the Ocean Trash Index by Ocean Conservancy, around 4.22 million items were collected during the 2017 International Coastal Cleanup (ICC) in the Philippines, 268,983 of which were straws and stirrers.
Based on a study by Ocean Conservancy and the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment, the Philippines is one of the five countries globally that account for half of the world’s plastic waste. Around half a million metric tons of plastic waste in the country leaks into the ocean every year.
In an interview with the BusinessMirror last year, SMARTSeas PH Project Management Office Project Manager Vincent V. Hilomen said the Philippines can already overtake China given its size and the amount of plastic pollution it creates.
He said that based on 2016 data, the Philippines ranked third—behind China and Indonesia—in plastic pollution.
Greenpeace said an estimated 12.7 million tons of plastic—everything from plastic bottles and bags to microbeads—end up in oceans each year.
It added that these pollutants are turning in every corner of the world—from Cornish beaches, to uninhabited Pacific islands, and is even being found trapped in Arctic ice.