EDITORIAL - A protected site

The government is still trying to trace the owner of the Chinese ship that ran aground on Tubbataha Reef last month. The guardians of the World Heritage Site said the boat Min Long Yu, which was transporting 2,912 frozen anteaters, inflicted greater damage on the corals than the US Navy minesweeper USS Guardian, which got stuck on the reef in January.

As assessed by Philippine authorities, 6,247.67 square meters of corals have been damaged by the two vessels, with the Chinese destroying a bit more at 3,902 square meters including coral networks estimated to be 500 years old. Some quarters said towing the Chinese vessel instead of breaking it up into smaller chunks and then lifting the pieces out of the reef was the reason for the greater damage, but government officials said the attempt of the Chinese crew to forcibly sail away was to blame.

Whatever the reason, that’s a huge tract of precious corals now destroyed. After two serious accidents in what is supposed to be a protected marine sanctuary, authorities should now be speeding up measures to prevent more ships from running aground in Tubbataha.

The Chinese, accused of poaching and harvesting endangered scaly anteaters, cannot point to bad weather as the reason for the grounding of their ship in waters that are indisputably within Philippine territory. But the typhoon season is fast approaching, and bad weather can send more vessels crashing into Tubbataha. It’s not the Pacific Ocean; surely it’s not impossible to intensify patrols around the reef in the middle of the Sulu Sea. More buoys or other markers can also be installed to warn ships away from the reef. Tubbataha is our national heritage and a protected site; it must be protected properly.