Saving our whales to save ourselves

The stories recur too frequently to ignore. A La Union fisherman’s banca capsized last Feb. from a gale, and he fell into shark-infested waters. Three sharp-toothed monsters circled him, waiting for the right moment to move in for the kill. In an instant dolphins appeared from nowhere and bumped the sharks off, giving him strength to pull himself onto the boat and shout for help. In a feature two weeks ago in Discovery Channel on World War II sailors, a US warship exploded from a mine, forcing the men to jump into the sea. Makos started attacking them. Most perished. The few who survived said a pod of dolphins arrived to save them. A lass in the ’60s narrated how, when a ship collided with her wooden ferry, she was thrown overboard with her leg bleeding. Attracted by the scent of blood, sharks nibbled at her toes and one took a bite off her leg. She fainted, but came to when she felt something lifting her from the water. It was a porpoise come to the rescue. She clung to it as it swam near enough to the shores of Mindoro for her to be seen by coastal villagers.

Do dolphins, the smaller types of whales, have a natural affinity for humans? After all, they’re mammals like us, gestating fetuses in wombs, giving live births and not eggs, and nursing newborns with milk. Then again, deer and tarsiers are mammals, too, yet they flee at the sight of humans. Dr. Andrea Bautista, head of World Wildlife Fund-Philippines’ Tañon Strait Initiative, acknowledges the many dolphin-rescue stories. But she has a scientific explanation for them: "Sharks are natural competitors of certain dolphin species for food. Such species are known to drive sharks away during feeding frenzies by bumping them on the side."

That, perhaps, is the plainest illustration too of the natural balance of the seas. Whales and dolphins, except the baleen types, feed on the same marine life that sharks do: medium-size fish and squid. The medium prey in turn feed on smaller fish and seaweeds. Take away one of them, say the big marine mammals or sharks, and the medium population would bloat to wipe out the small ones. Take away the small ones, and the mediums would go hungry and die, and so would the megas. In a sense, each size variety plays a regulatory role in balancing life at sea.

There lies too the reason for WWF’s obsession with saving our whales. The environment group does not merely survey and study the gentle giants for some esoteric aim. The aim is, as WWF-Philippines president Lory Tan puts it, "economic, we save the whales to ensure food for humans, we save the whales to save ourselves."

Sadly at Tañon Strait, many locals view whales as competitors for fish catch. Despite laws against harming the endangered cetaceans, they catch them for food or kill them on sight. And at least one mayor in Negros Oriental argues with WWF that the locals are right.

Statistics disprove the official, though. Half of the Philippine population live in or near the coast, and depend on seafood for protein. Whales thrive in Tañon Strait, the narrow V-shaped channel between the elongated islands of Negros and Cebu, as they do in the waters of Babuyan Isles, Palawan, Bohol, Davao and Zamboanga. All the 23 known toothed and baleen species of whales and dolphins can be found in Philippine waters. Twelve of them are believed to be transient in Tañon, feeding on squid and fish. They once thrived in those waters, but hunting and killing has decimated the population in the past three decades. And the fish catch has dropped with it. About two million people reside in the 42 towns around Tañon. If each resident eats only one-fourth kilo of fish per day, they need to catch 500,000 kilos – 500 metric tons – each day. Dolphins would each eat three to four kilos of fish a day. They are not plentiful enough to pose stiff competition for catch. Yet fishermen’s normal fish catch have dwindled, precisely because the whale-killing has thrown nature to imbalance. Commercial vessels poaching in municipal waters, and small fishermen using destructive methods like dynamite and cyanide, also took their toll.

Imbalance causes pests. In Australia in recent years, farmers have taken to shooting kangaroos that have grown too many and ravage their crops. Scientists traced this to human encroachment into natural habitats of dingoes, the usual predators of wallabies. With no dingoes keeping the population in check, the jumpers thrived to attack farms.

Similarly the introduction of tilapia into Lake Lanao destroyed its biodiversity, once one of the highest in the world. Preying on other fish and eggs, the tilapia caused an imbalance that scientists fear they can never reverse. Same with ayungin introduced to Taal Lake, which decimated the tawilis and the rare maliputo (fresh-water jack). The World Fisheries Center in Thailand estimates that Filipinos have consumed 90 percent of its fish in the seas in the last 60 years. Our population continues to grow – and demand more food from the sea. A healthy reef would contain at least 60 metric tons of biomass, not just actual catch, for every square kilometer. Philippine reefs hold only 15-30 MT. These reefs are the poor’s social security, their free source of food if they don’t have any gainful employment. They also serve as spawning and feeding grounds for squid and medium-size fish on which whales feed. Keeping the natural balance will ensure adequate food stocks from what’s left of our marine life.

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Save Mother Earth. Call World Wildlife Fund-Philippines: (02) 929-1258, 920-7923, 920-7926 or 920-7931. To volunteer for or donate to the succeeding Tañon Strait whale surveys, one week each month from July to October, ask for Flory Tabio, or e-mail [email protected]. To sign up as member, and get regular bulletins on other projects or discounts in certain ecotourism destinations, look for Vix Chua, or e-mail [email protected].

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E-mail: [email protected]