A hundred dancers and three shark mascots staged a flash mob at the Quezon City Memorial Circle on May 21 to celebrate the proclamation declaring portions of the Philippine Rise as protected areas.
President Duterte issued the landmark environmental policy by declaring more than 350,000 hectares of the Philippine Rise as a marine resource reserve under the National Integrated Protected Areas System (Nipas) Act. Almost 50,000 hectares of the marine reserve was declared as a strict-protection zone, where only scientific research is allowed.
“The Philippine Rise represents our hope for a sustainable future. As other parts of our country’s territories are under siege by illegal and destructive extraction activities, Philippine Rise serves as our country’s source and sanctuary of our remaining natural heritage,” Biodiversity Management Bureau Director Crisanta Marlene Rodriguez said in a statement.
Volunteers from a host of environmental organizations, including Oceana, Buklod Tao and Eco-waste Coalition, also unveiled a banner thanking the government for declaring the Philippine Rise as a marine-resource reserve.
“Let us all work harder to protect, manage and conserve this unique biodiversity,” Rodriguez added. The Pangisda Natin Gawing Tama (Panagat), a network of non-governmental organizations and people’s organization working for sustainable fisheries, also hailed the collaborative efforts of scientists, government agencies and civil-society organizations in working for the declaration of the presidential proclamation.
“Protecting the Philippine Rise is crucial and timely, and ushers in new hope for the world’s oceans devastated by overfishing, pollution, mining and climate change. It is also important that similar move to protect key marine resources in other parts of the country be given urgent and necessary protection,” Panagat said in a statement.
Declared a protected area by President Duterte through Presidential Proclamation 489 on May 15, the Philippine Rise is a 24.4-million-hectare undersea region east of Luzon, which includes a 13.4-million-hectare outer section that was validated by the United Nations’s Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf as part of Philippine territory in 2012.
The shallowest part of the region is Benham Bank, with a depth of at least 50 meters. In 2016 government scientists reported 100-percent coral cover in several sampling sites, plus over 170 types of fish. The Philippine Rise is also special, as it has been identified as the only known spawning site for Pacific Bluefin Tuna, one of the most valuable fish on Earth.
Lawyer Gloria Estenzo Ramos, Vice President for Oceana Philippines, said that the pooled efforts to protect the Philippine Rise is laudable, and should be sustained.