DENR task force to monitor, document coral bleaching

MANILA, Philippines - Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Ramon Paje has directed his agency’s Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau to create a task force that will monitor and document coral bleaching in the country.

Paje also ordered his department’s regional officials to mobilize their technical staff to collaborate with local government units (LGUs), particularly those with marine protected areas, as well as divers’ groups, the academe and other stakeholders in monitoring coral bleaching in their respective areas.

This, amid reports by scientists and divers of massive bleaching of coral reefs in the country due to warmer-than-usual ocean water temperature.

“Coral bleaching is among the many impacts of climate change that the country is expected to experience. This is the reason why the Philippines, together with other developing nations, remains steadfast in pushing for more concrete measures from developed countries to address this global issue on climate change,” Paje said.

While the national emission of greenhouse gases that cause global warming is very little, Paje said the country, being archipelagic, is among the small nations seen to bear the major brunt of the negative impacts of climate change, including coral bleaching.

“Aside from monitoring coral bleaching, the task force is also expected to provide technical assistance to LGUs in crafting strategies to effectively manage their marine protected areas, and other measures to minimize coral stress like pollution control and solid waste management in coastal communities,” Paje said.                   

He added that the task force should also come up with recommendations on the establishment of a network of climate-resilient marine protected areas, as well as demonstration sites for best practices in the management of these areas, restoration and restocking, and other measures to reduce human activities that will impact on coral reefs.

In her paper, “Coral Bleaching Watch Philippines 2010,” Prof. Miledel Christine Quibilan of the University of the Philippines’ Marine Science Institute defines coral bleaching as the “whitening of corals due to the loss of their symbiotic algae such as zooxanthellae.”

Quibilan said coral bleaching is a stress response of corals and other invertebrates like giant clams, soft corals and anemones, to anomalously high water temperatures.

The country, according to Quibilan’s report, has started experiencing anomalously warm temperature in the second half of May this year, toward the end of the El Niño phenomenon.