Saving Taklong Island: UPV scientists and volunteers work together to clean marine reserve of oil slick
At first glance and viewed from afar, Taklong Island, which is maintained by UP in the Visayas, may still look its pristine self. Rowing nearer to it however, one can already see the oil slick floating on the water surface. A little closer will give sight of blackened mangrove roots, and further on into the Marine Station and the beachfront will reveal darkened rocks and coves as well as drums of accumulated bunker fuel previously collected by volunteer cleaners, which include environmentalist groups from UP Visayas, West Visayas University and the University of San Agustin and even foreigners. Of course, there is still Taklong's white shore, but wait until one digs a bit underneath, compacted oil that has mixed with sand will be bared.
The devastating crisis of the oil spill caused by the sinking last August 11, 2006 of M/T Solar I, which carried bunker fuel, struck a toll on the ecology of the marine reserve. It was one of the first areas to receive the bunker fuel floating in the seawater driven towards the Province of Guimaras by the large waves of the southwest monsoon.
Taklong and Tandog group of islands, as well as the nearby coastal barangays of Lapaz and San Roque and adjacent marine waters, have been declared as the Taklong Island National Marine Reserve through Presidential Proclamation No. 525 signed on February 8, 1990 by then President Corazon C. Aquino. The primary purpose of the declaration is to protect and preserve the ecological, scenic, scientific and educational features of the area, including the marine wildlife resources found therein. The total area of the reserve is 1,143.454 hectares, composed approximately of 960 hectares of marine waters with corals and seagrass beds in shallow areas and 183 hectares of land mass and varying sizes of mangrove patches.
The area is characterized as highly diverse not only in terms of the inherent number of species but also in kinds of marine communities (mangroves, coral reefs, and seagrass beds, among others), thus serving as an excellent field laboratory for students and researchers. It has a naturally rich fishery resource (shellfish, crustaceans, fish, etc.) which when managed well could easily support the food and economic needs of the coastal and adjacent barangays. The relatively large areas of seagrass beds and coral reefs act as feeding grounds for the juvenile to adult fishes. Its declaration as a protected area, therefore, is important in ensuring its sustainability for future generations while meeting the needs of the present one.
The initial aftermath assessment shows that the mangroves are the hardest hit marine community in the reserve. "With the thick oil, I don't think we can do any work on the mangroves. If we force it, we might end up cutting the roots like what happened in Semirara and might bring more harm. The workers there didn't know or maybe were previously not informed not to cut. The trees may survive the oil spill, but cutting them is a sure way of killing them," detailed Dr. Wilfredo Campos, a UPV marine biologist. "The smothered young mangroves will have difficulty surviving. What is important is to have the older mangroves to keep the coastline stable and ensure somehow that there will be seedlings in the next season," he added.
"The immediate effects of the bunker fuel on the surface and underwater environment are going to be in the area between the high tide and low tide because that is where the oil will be settling. The oil will have with it something heavier than water like solid impurities. Once these sink, they will have a direct effect underneath. But so far, those who dived last week and until today haven't seen an indication of that happening even in the shallow grass beds. But we can see the oil slick on the surface. We will have to go back to the sea grasses later to see the effects of the oil on them," he further explained.
Dr. Campos is leading a team of researchers who are collecting samples on the island right now "to determine what happens to the small fishes. For those staying under the mangroves where the oil is heavily deposited, of course, their food supply and the toxicity of the water will affect them but they cannot swim very far because they're young. When that happens, there will be a consequence on the adult population - that's what we fear as regards the reef fish. It may not be obvious now, precisely because those affected are in the early stages. Maybe two to three months from now, when we expect the early stage fishes to start appearing in the reef, we might not see them there anymore. Eventually this will come out in the monitoring. We took water samples as well as sediment and plankton samples for the chemistry people also. We took as many samples so we can have the results in the following week."
Many people will feel gloomy about it. But it will recover, that's nature. Of course, we are all praying that it will successfully recover soon somehow. It is good that we have baseline data on Taklong, unlike in Semirara. Now at least, we can compare the research results to the original data we have on the reserve," he pointed out. Significant studies on mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds, zooplankton and fisheries in the area have been previously conducted on the Marine Reserve.
The cautious optimism is also echoed by Prof. Nestor Yunque, Station Head of the marine reserve. "Mangroves serve as a nursery for marine organisms. Since they are the most affected here, the little ones cannot hope to survive. That's why we cannot expect a lot of marine organisms to grow into adults in the next several months. The population will really drop and the impact will definitely be on the socio-economic aspect later. The marine ecology will eventually balance itself but the time of stabilization is uncertain. It depends on different factors. Waves can help a lot and of course the cleanup."
The University has started the cleanup in Taklong Island with ROTC students as the first batch followed by the CWTS group. Contaminated sand were dug up and put in sacks. "Let the natural process of cleansing work on the mangroves. The students concentrate on the beaches because we hope to segregate the sand from the bunker fuel later. The original plan was supposedly to take out the affected sand outside the island but considering the volume that we're going to bring out, it will have a huge impact on the beachfront. We hope to process it, albeit in crude form, wherein we will try to wash off the oil from the sand by boiling and then return it back to the beach for further cleaning by the rain. We plan to have a processing area in one part of the island. An alternative is bioremediation, where bacteria are added to decompose the oil," Prof. Yunque elaborated.
While the coral reefs and seagrass beds appear to have been spared by the bunker fuel leaking from the sunken tanker, it will be just a matter of time before they are also affected if the oil deposits along the shoreline and mangroves are not removed soon and the sunken ship continues to release oil to the sea surface.
The University has been requested by Guimaras Governor Rahman Nava to assist in the assessment of the damage caused by the oil spill and UPV is committed to provide such support. Even before that request, by virtue of UPV's presence in the Taklong Island Marine Station and National Marine Reserve, a task force has been formed by UPV Chancellor Glenn Aguilar to immediately respond to the crisis. Administrative Order No. 337 was created to compose the following teams made up of UPV faculty and staff members: Clean-up, Livelihood Assistance, IEC, Bio-Physical Assessment and Monitoring, Relief Action, Analytical Services, Socio-Economic Assessment and Monitoring, and Administrative Support Team. As in the Semirara oil spill incident, UPV seeks to lend its expertise in addressing areas where it can make a difference. Being a state university with limited financial resources however, the generosity of external agencies are always sought and appreciated.
(Anna Razel Ramirez; UPV-IPO with sources from Dr. Rex Sadaba)