Sea turtles’ 30-yr journey starts with poachers turned saviors
(Editor’s Note: The author, who served as tourism secretary in 1997-98, is president of the International School of Sustainable Tourism.)
Did you know that marine turtles, no matter how far they swim around the world, always return to their place of birth after 30 years? This is one of the amazing facts we picked up at the Pawikan Conservation Center in Nagbalayong, Morong, Bataan. Volunteers in this fishing village attempt to keep endangered marine turtles from vanishing.
The volunteers fear that the turtles would fall prey to poachers. At night, they patrol the 7 kilometers of shoreline facing the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), scoop up turtles’ nests buried in the sand, and bring these to the center’s hatcheries for incubation.
The night patrollers have saved more than 47,000 turtles since September 1999 when the center was founded, according to the center’s leader, Manolo Ibias.
The total distance walked by them in a year is said to be equal to the distance between Morong and Sao Paolo in Brazil.
Manolo, now 55 and once a poacher himself, plans to rest his leg muscles when he picks up his senior citizenship card. His two sons, both in college, have vowed to take his place.
Ecotourism lecture
In June, Manolo delivered a lecture before 24 local and foreign participants of a two-week intensive training course on the planning and management of ecotourism at the International School of Sustainable Tourism. (The ISST, located at the former Subic Amusement Center building, is a school that friends and I founded for tourism industry players interested in a continuing education in tourism.)
The participants traveled to the Pawikan Conservation Center to learn how it operates and attracts ecotourists. The center is about an hour of good roads from the Subic Freeport Zone. Entry fee is P20 per person.
Manolo was generous in sharing knowledge. He also told them about his fellow villagers’ passion for conserving turtles.
The training course was sponsored by the Asian Productivity Organization (APO) and implemented by the ISST, Development Academy of the Philippines, and Department of Tourism.
The participants almost bought out the center’s stocks of yellow and green souvenir shirts and turtle dolls.
Public awareness
Manolo said the center’s—and the community’s—objective in conservation was to make the public aware of the reasons and the need to protect and grow the population of the endangered marine turtles.
He said that of the seven marine turtle species in the world, three were on the endangered list and found in the Philippines: green turtles, Olive Ridley turtles, and hawk’s bill turtles.
Manolo conducted his lecture in a 30-square-meter classroom. He stood above a cemented pond shaped like a giant turtle and his listeners sat on wooden benches.
One of his flip charts listed “taong kumukuha ng itlog” (people who poach eggs) as predators.
Next to the lecture hall is a 45-meter fenced hatchery.
But we saw neither nests nor hatchlings because at noon, turtle hatchlings keep themselves cool in their nests under the sand.
Dash to shore
Near sunset and at dawn during hatching season, the hatchlings burrow up to the surface and head instinctively to the roiling waves of the West Philippine Sea.
Their dash to the shore is the equivalent of a wild stampede of a herd of carabaos, only very much slower. Patrollers give them a free ride to get to the shoreline faster.
During their life cycle, marine turtles swim perhaps halfway around the globe. But on the call of motherhood, they always return to their place of birth (Nagbalayong) after 30 years.
They know where Nagbalayong is because Mother Nature implanted a GPS (global positioning system) in their brains.
The first batches that poacher-turned-conservationist Manolo bade goodbye to in 1999 will be welcomed back in 2029. (He hopes he will still be around.)
For Manolo, every turtle that returns home to Nagbalayong is a survivor.
During the 30 years at sea, the turtles escape pollution, slaughter and the wide, yawning mouths of hungry sharks. It would be ironic if they come home to Nagbalayong only for their nests to be poached or for them to end up as turtle soup. (Manolo said he had heard that pharmaceutical companies were having turtle meat ground to become an element of Viagra-like pills.)
Flash of insight
It has been more than a decade since Manolo and the other volunteers last added to their fishing incomes by slaughtering turtles and poaching eggs.
Manolo said a chicken egg then was selling for P2.50 each, and a turtle egg, for P3.50.
The money from what he admitted was from “criminal activities” paid for the children’s school tuition or settled debts.
The flash of insight on turtle conservation occurred when the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement, the United Nations Development Programme, the provincial government and other foreign conservation agencies educated the fishing villagers on the issue.
The community learned that poaching had drastically cut the population of nesters and noticed that hatching seasons had shortened. It was awakened to the threats posed by the declining turtle population on their extra income and the damage done to the creatures themselves.
But the advocacy would not have lasted long had there been an imbalance between environment management and the flow of income to the community.
The national and local governments, the Bataan tourism council foundation, embassies and private donors funded alternative livelihood activities.
One donor was Japanese Ambassador Ryuichiro Yamazaki. A billboard at the hatchery acknowledged Japan’s help, surprising APO vice president Joselito Bernardo. (Yamazaki is the incumbent APO president.)
Also last year, the Pawikan Conservation Center built a two-story building from a grant of about P1 million from the Tourism Investments Economic Zone Authority.
Fund-raisers
Speaking for himself and his fellow volunteers, Manolo said raising funds to keep the center afloat was a tough challenge.
He said the center sometimes ran out of money but that it continued to watch and care for the turtles.
To earn a bit, the center welcomes groups of paying tourists eager to experience holding and saving turtles under the activity called “Adopt A Turtle.”
A poster at the center proclaims: “Experience a chance of a lifetime!… In your hands… Hold the future!”
Ecotourists arrive mainly during the September-February hatching season. They join night patrols, light their way with pen-size flashlights, kneel on the beach and watch as the hatchlings come out to the surface.
At dawn or near sunset, when the weather is cool, they hand-carry the hatchlings to the shoreline to start a 30-year adventure.
Tourists come also in the last week of November for the Pawikan Festival. Schoolchildren arriving in buses as well as local residents join activities like the turtle-costume competition, sand castling, beach volleyball, paddle painting, photography and kite flying.
Tour operators also include the Pawikan Conservation Center as part of the must-stops in Bataan, along with bird watching at the Balanga Nature and Wetland Park, and visits to Mount Samat’s Memorial Cross and Shrine of Valor (Dambana ng Kagitingan), Sto. Domingo Church in Abucay, Subic Zoobic Safari, and museums and replicas of Angkor Wat and Buddha in the former boat-people processing camp at the Bataan Technology Park.
Impressed participants
During the two-week training course, I offered Manolo free space at ISST’s Ecocenter campus for lectures and other activities, to allow more Subic visitors to be exposed to the care and conservation of marine turtles.
When the 24 course participants returned to ISST, each submitted comments on the authenticity, accessibility, accommodations and activities of the Pawikan Conservation Center. Overall, they found Manolo and his advocacy impressive.
The center invites families and friends to come and watch one of nature’s wonders unfold before their eyes.
