A beach resort & shell museum: A perfect combination

Summer is heating up beautifully. The more scorching hot it sizzles, the better for beach bums like you & me. You guessed it – bodies are making a beeline for the shoreline of Anilao, Batangas, dotted elbow-to-elbow with numerous resorts and dive camps.

So we beat most of the beach bums to the draw & hied off to one of the more popular resorts in Anilao owned by our good friends Charlie & Fely Leobrera at the first hint of summer.

Ah summer! And summer at the beach! Nothing like frying in the sun but not knowing it because you’re either underwater cavorting with the little colorful fishes, or you’re seated in one of Vistamar Beach Resort & Hotel’s many boats hieing off to the next – door island for more stewing under the sun. Or you’re comfortably perched in Vistamar’s al fresco dining room overlooking the azure waters sipping a cold beer. The waters, and shoreline, by the way are kept pristine at Vistamar.

After a lazy morning of this, a hearty lunch of seafood (we had the freshest of fish speared just that morning by Charlie himself, deliciously charred for lunch) Charlie & Fely graciously offered us a tour of the latest baby of Charlie, a gift to Fely.

Fely Morena-Leobrera is one of those people born to collect. She started out as a collector of stamps, Philippine antiques, orchids and miniature figurines, until her love affairs started her off in one of the most extensive collections of shells in the country. Charlie, in his salad days, was a seaman (he says ladies used to whistle when he and fellow ship officers strolled by in their crisp white uni-forms) and he gifted his young bride Fely with a beautiful shell from one of his local trips. That set her off, and in no time their little nest of an apart-ment could no longer contain her amass-ment of shells.

Today Carfel Mu-seum at Vistamar houses Fely’s collec-tion of local and impor-ted seashells, but it isn’t just a collection. Fely has painstaking-ly catalogued each shell and fossil in the museum. Its ama-zing how she can rattle off the information on each shell at Carfel, until I found out that Charlie and Fely, together with friend Foster James Springsteen, published a book in 1986 which is now used as a reference book on Philippine seashells by serious collectors.

Their love for shells brought them to the length and breadth of the archipelago, from Davao to the virgin waters of Catanduanes. The fluted clams were prettily perched in the glass case, as were the majestic Golden Cowrie, one of the most sought-after by collectors and a personal favorite of Fely. An interesting anecdote: Charlie bought his first Golden Cowrie, as a gift to his young wife in 1966 for the princely sum of P10,000 on their 1st anniversary. The Golden Cowrie, by the way, is only found in the Pacific side. Anyway, ever since then, Charlie has been gifting Fely a Golden Cowrie every anniversary thereafter. No, I didn’t count a hundred cowries yet, but they may just get there. Since we were so charmed by this little tale, the couple also gifted us with a wonderful specimen of a golden cowrie , which now sits prettily in a glass-topped jar serving as coffee table in our living room. A place of honor indeed for the Queen of Philippine seashells.

The dedication of the Leobrera couple to marine biology is commendable – the willingness to share the knowledge, and the beauty of underwater life is selfless. Students are given 50-percent discount so they can enjoy knowledge at Carfel’s 2nd floor research laboratory.

What I initially thought was going to be a leisurely one-hour casual discovery of the fascinating marine life turned out to a full afternoon of delight, thanks to Fely’s knowledgeable discourse on shells. We began a journey that took us to little known coastal towns whose folks didn’t make much of the priceless bounty of their seas. Fely laments the fact that there’s very little interest in Philippine marine life. Oh sure some paltry laws have been enacted, vain attempts at preservation, but so much is lacking in the implementation of these conservation laws. Fely says it’s wrong to even bother with collectors who hand pick shells for their collection, for how much can you pack into your collection? And how many serious collectors are out there? This can’t possibly threaten our supply of shells. Filipinos are shell-fish eaters, and they’ve been eating clam and mollusks for centuries. Has this depleted our supply? But the poisoning of the seas through dynamite and cyanide fishing has certainly wrought havoc on Philippine marine life, and this is undisputable, and one of the saddest facts of one heritage. Our myopic view of making a living obscures our chances at national pride, and Fely and Charlie are at the forefront of the fight for the conservation of Philippine marine life. Fely appeals to the authorities to carefully study the bans in places and implement more strictly the conservation laws. Even simple beach bums like us can do our share. When we pick up a shell to admire its beauty, don’t bring it home just to be kicked around later on and end up in the round file (read trash can). Return it to the sea where it properly belongs. This little tip from Fely is a jewel.

We ended our afternoon delight with this impassioned plea from Fely, in awe of our rich natural resources, the wealth neatly catalogued in glass cases at Carfel Museum in Mabini, Anilao, Batangas. We set off to Anilao in search of sun and sea, and went back fully enriched with new found knowledge. What a bonus!

Mabuhay!!! Be proud to be a Filipino!!!!

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