Visayan Sea collapse: We need to verify this!

I have always been supportive of the advocacy of the Visayan Sea Squadron on their very controversial proposal to close the Visayan Sea to commercial fishing. But last Sunday, The Freeman headlined a story that the Visayan Sea was on the brink of "Ecosystem" collapse based on the findings of a volunteer study group of divers mostly from the University of San Carlos (USC) who surveyed a hundred areas in the Visayan Sea Triangle. This piece of news should not be taken from an alarmist point of view; rather, it should trigger a more in-depth study on the extent of the damage to the ecosystem of the Visayan Sea before we push for drastic measures.

No doubt this story is connected to a report on the depletion of the world's marine resources; that if nothing drastic is done to preserve biodiversity, we shall witness in our lifetime fish stocks depleted to the point of extinction. I have yet to see an honest-to-goodness report whether fish stocks are dwindling around the Visayan Seas and how long they would last. But whenever we go to Carbon Market, we still see a lot of fish on display. This brings people to ask, "If our ecosystem is on the brink of collapse, how come we still get a lot of fish sold in our supermarkets?" This is a question that the Visayan Sea Squadron has to answer convincingly. Meanwhile, it is up to the Department of Environment and Natural Re-sources (DENR) or its line agency the Bureau of Aquatic Resources to do a parallel study in order to validate what the Visayan Sea Squadron has been saying all along so that finally our people will be convinced that we are moving closer to an impending ecological disaster if we do not intervene and prevent the inevitable collapse of our ecosystem. More importantly, we also would like to know the various options we have in order to prevent any further damage to our ecosystem.

Meanwhile, it is comforting to know that Mother Nature can rejuvenate itself. The best proof of this is when we build fish sanctuaries like the one in Hilutungan, Cordova, which has become a favorite tourist attraction. For its part, many municipalities in the Province of Cebu has also embarked on fish sanctuary projects which I believe can prevent further damage to our ecosystem. If only every town in the Province of Cebu did this, the entire Cebu Island would be circled with fish sanctuaries that in a few years would blossom into breeding areas for fish stocks. There is hope with this program.

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Talking about our environment, there is no question that our problems with pollution can only end if we do something positive to reduce the toxic emissions we release to the atmosphere. Well, last Sunday evening, my good friend, Mr. Hector Almario invited this writer and his friends to the inauguration of his latest gas station the PTT Gas Station located at the Maximo Patalinjug Ave. in Humay-humay Lapu-Lapu City. It turned out that we were all witnesses to history in the making as Mr. Almario proudly told us that this was the first multi-fuel gas station ever to operate in this country. This was the first time that a service station had both the usual fuel pumps for unleaded gasoline or diesel fuel and another bay dedicated solely for Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG). If you didn't know, vehicles using LPG emit fewer carbons into the atmosphere.

With world prices of fuel oil getting more difficult to extract, plus the high demand for fuel oil spurred by China and India, not to mention the continued manipulation by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) you can expect that the pump prices of fuel would remain as expensive as it is today. We are now embarking on a new era in the use of alternative fuels. This is what we call thinking out of the box! Mr. Almario's PTT Gas Station is breaking ground for more multi-fuel gas stations to open throughout the country very soon where we can expect the alternative fuels like coco-diesel or ethanol to be sold in your friendly neighborhood gas stations. The more we use alternative fuels, the less pollutants we throw into the environment.

A few months back, Mr. Almario opened the first ever Autogas LPG gas station in Panagdait, Mabolo, which caters solely to vehicles using LPG. While this is considered a new technology today, my good friend, Mr. Efrain Pelaez Jr. told us that this has been done in Europe more than 20 years ago. During Last Sunday's inauguration, Mr. Almario introduced us to Mr. Siri-pong Phoungpaka, President and CEO of PTT Philippines Corp. (PTTPC) which is the Thailand Petroleum Authority. Also amongst his guests were C. Dogan Caglarcan, Vice-President of Europump International from Turkey that manufactures LPG pumps using the Euro standard.

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