Stolen mameng return to Tubbataha home

TUBBATAHA REEFS — Government and private groups started this week to return to their natural habitat rare fish poached by Chinese last Christmas. One hundred-twenty napoleon wrasses, locally called mameng, gently were slipped back into the waters of this UN World Heritage Site, the spawning ground of most of Southeast Asia’s marine animals. The fish quickly swam down to freedom in coral nooks, oblivious of tiger sharks that lurked about. One quickly had a "spa", letting small blue cleaner wrasses nibble at food scraps trapped in its scales.

Agriculture Sec. Arthur Yap and Fisheries Bureau Dir. Malcolm Sarmiento led the government side in nursing 351 stolen wrasses and 1,307 giant groupers back to health upon confiscation from the Hong Kong ship f/v Hoi Wan. Tubbataha marine park chief Angelique Songco, World Wildlife Fund-Philippines president Lory Tan, WWF Tubbataha project head Marivel Dygico, and environment lawyers Adele Villena and Asis Perez organized the expedition. Presidential daughter Luli Arroyo, with fellow-underwater photographers Eduardo CuUnjieng and Gutsy Tuason, served as documenters and had led donors in the P500,000 project — the first ever mass transfer to save the endangered napoleon wrasse. Five hundred dolphins circled the WWF’s m/b Minerva and the BFAR patrol vessel at daybreak Wednesday as if to laud the effort.

The nine-hour voyage from Puerto Princesa, Palawan, to the heart of the Sulu Sea was partly political. Government officers and conservationists showed resolve to drive foreign or local thieves out of Tubbataha’s 90,000-hectare no-fishing zone. It was a fitting reply to a civil society boycott since January of restaurants serving mameng and whale meat. But social security is the real driver. Tubbataha is regarded as Southeast Asia’s seafood factory. The north and south atolls, jutting out of the sea surface at low tide, form coral-ringed lagoons that promote feeding and spawning. Uniquely too, the circulating tidal and wind-driven currents buffet the larvae of corals, fish and other marine life every which way, to spread from Sulu Sea to other Philippine and regional waters. Unprotected, Tubbataha would turn into an over-fished, cyanided, dynamited seabed. Forty-five million Filipinos, that half of the population living along the coast, and equivalents in Southeast Asia, would go hungry.

The scarce napoleon wrasse, the world’s largest reef fish growing as big as a sofa, is a predatory carnivore. If wiped out, its prey would increase in number and use up their own food supply of smaller fish, plankton and plants. The resulting imbalance of nature would upset human food stocks too. More so since mameng is hunted and caught while still less than two kilos, to be sold in restaurants at P10,000 apiece.

Of the 351 dying wrasses seized from the poachers, 350 recovered during three months in a fish nursery at Puerto Princesa Bay. Six fisheries students volunteered free labor to care for the fish whose sale in banned by the UN Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species. Experts recommended "first-class transport" to Tubbataha last Monday night, by oxygenation in plastic bags like live fish exports. Oddly, what should have been the first batch of 150 homecoming wrasses grew too weak and had to be put back in nursery. The 120 replacements were placed in good old-fashioned aerated tubs — and survived the voyage. Atty. Asis Perez, one of many private prosecutors of the poachers, made a note of seeking in future a legal protocol: poached endangered fish, upon documenting by lawmen, should be released back to safe waters at once instead of brought to the vicinity of the court trial. In this case, Hoi Wan wrasses and groupers had to wait eight days at Tubbataha’s Ranger station before being brought to Puerto Princesa as court evidence. That and the journey back expose the fish to greater risks. (For my part, I made a note of contacting Boni Comandante, the inventor of a potion from natural substances that puts fish safely to sleep for long-distance transport.)

Other species in Tubbataha need protecting, such as the giant manta ray, hawksbill turtle, and hundreds of species of sea birds. Yet six Rangers can patrol only a tenth of park on any given night. Seeing their leaky roof and wilting potted vegetables, Secretary Yap committed P1 million for barracks repair and gardening. Palawan Gov. Joel Reyes, in whose local jurisdiction Tubbataha falls, matched it with P500,000 for operations.

The Ranger contingent — three from the Navy, one from the Coast Guard, and two from the Tubbataha Management Office — can never be enough to guard the marine park. They had kept 43 Hoi Wan poachers at bay in December. Two years ago they held six intruding Chinese vessels until naval reinforcements arrived. On the eve of the wrasse release, they were busy chasing locals quarrying samong, a type of shell used for buttons and ornaments.

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