Environmental groups said there’s an increased sighting of large marine wildlife in Philippine waters this year, notably the whale shark or butanding.
This came as the reported sighting of a whale shark near Boracay Island two months into the top holiday destination’s closure stirred positive comments.
Boracay Island, in the town of Malay, Aklan, is known for its white-sand beaches and pristine waters.
But whale shark watching is not among its attractions. It is, however, a tourist activity in Donsol, Sorsogon, and Oslob, Cebu, where these gentle giants congregate during migration to feed on plankton.
Boracay Island is home to several local and some endemic species of bats and birds, while its beaches and reefs are teeming with wildlife, including several species of fishes and marine turtles that are threatened by tourism activities.
Whale sharks visiting the island’s water is “not new.” But because of tourism activities, particularly water sports, sightings became very rare.
Presidential Spokesman Harry L. Roque Jr. said the reported sighting of a butanding only means the on-going rehabilitation effort on the country’s top tourist destination is gaining ground.
This, however, raised eyebrows among environmental groups, saying such claim is inconclusive.
Weighing in on Roque’s claim, they said the sighting of whale sharks and other marine wildlife is a normal thing near Boracay Island and other areas around Panay Island, that it should not be attributed to the “successful rehabilitation” of Boracay.
In fact, they said butanding can be seen even in Manila Bay, one of the most polluted areas in the Philippines.
Reacting to Roque’s statement, AA Yaptinchay, founder of Marine Wildlife Watch of the Philippines, said the fact that Boracay was closed to tourists made it ideal for visiting marine wildlife like the whale sharks.
“It is good that there has been some marine wildlife reported around Boracay Island after it was shut down, including the whale shark last week and reef sharks earlier. Some marine animals avoid areas that are highly disturbed and polluted. For example, Boracay Island is a nesting ground for marine turtles, but this happens only in dark, quiet and undisturbed places,” Yaptinchay added.
He said nesting rarely occurs on the island these days because of tourism activities.
“Seawalls, light, noise, boat traffic and even domestic animals affect the presence of wildlife in and around an island. The whale shark sighting just shows that removing any disturbance and addressing degradation of habitats is the key for marine life to flourish,” he said.
However, he said there has been a lot of whale shark sighting around the Philippines this year.
“[It is] not surprising that they showed up around Panay [Island], too,” he said.
Yaptinchay said the sighting of a whale shark in Boracay should not be considered a sign that the ongoing rehabilitation is already a success.
“Whale sharks utilize the Philippines as a feeding and pupping ground, as well as a migratory corridor. They are found throughout the country but aggregate in productive coastlines with plankton blooms where they feed,” he explained.
He added that Malacañang failed to measure anything scientifically in making its conclusion.
“The presence of one whale shark now compared to what? Whale shark area all over the country? Again, removing the disturbance in a natural area will be repopulated by wildlife, if any are left,” he said.
Vince Cinches, oceans and political campaigner of Greenpeace Southeast Asia-Philippines, echoed Yaptinchay’s observation that butanding sighting is a regular occurrence in Boracay.
He added that using it as an indicator of the health of the sea is fake news “as whale sharks are migratory species.”
“The government should stop hyping on wrong metrics to the rehabilitation, and instead speak of the details of the rehabilitation plan, what was achieved and what is still needed,” he said.
According to Cinches, the public needs to see the real picture on what is happening on the island—from the environment, the state of the people and state of governance. For example, how many individuals and government officers responsible for giving out permits to the operation of unscrupulous businesses are made accountable?
“We understand that they are as excited as we are [about the whale shark sighting], but I am sure the rest of the public and other public servants would agree that butanding sighting is not an indicator of success,” Cinches said.
For his part, Leon Dulce, national coordinator of the Kalikasan-People’s Network for the Environment, said a third-party investigation has yet to verify the success of the rehabilitation on Boracay Island.
“How can the government claim that the whale shark sighting is related to the success of its so-called rehabilitation efforts when what it did was merely close the island in the first place?” he said.
According to Dulce, the whale shark was most likely a stray and did not have anything to do with the rehabilitation efforts.
“Divers say that some whale sharks occasionally pass by the waters off Boracay, with documented reports going back to as early as 2010—long before the rehabilitation efforts. It is even possible that due to the dearth of studies conducted, visiting the waters off Boracay could actually be part of some of these whale sharks’ normal behavior, regardless of what is happening [on the island],” he pointed out.
Another factor, Dulce said, is that the oceans are already warming globally.
“Since they [bodies of water] comprise the planet’s largest surface area, they absorb most of the heat from an increasingly warm atmosphere. The Philippines’s seas are not immune to these temperature changes. When there are drastic temperature changes in the sea, the marine chemistry and current routes also change,” he pointed out. He said these events, in turn, influence how nutrients within the sea flow.
“Where the nutrients go, the krill [small crustaceans] go also. And where the krill go, there the whale shark also go. Thus, there are many other factors why whale sharks like this recently reported could have strayed from the species’ expected and widely documented migration routes,” he said.
According to Dulce, there is no concrete evidence backing Roque’s claim, adding that the sighting of a whale shark should not be used to justify sacrificing 24,000 workers who were affected by President Duterte’s unjust closure order.
It should be noted that the global population of whale sharks is on the decline. It is considered endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Its long lifespan and late maturation makes it difficult to breed.
In some cases, whale sharks become victims of accidental bycatch. It is listed, along with other shark species, under the Convention on Migratory Species-Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of Migratory Sharks.