50M on Opening Day

Fifty million pesos does not make a blockbuster when it comes to film, but it certainly does for an exhibit.

Shell’s multi-media exhibit “Beauty, Bounty and a Shared Heritage: 25 Years of Protecting Tubbataha” at the Atrium of SM Mega Mall did not mean to make money.

In the strictest terms, it hasn’t.  All it’s done is to provide a venue for Environment Secretary Ramon Paje and Tubbataha Management Office (TMO) Head Angelique Songco to come together during the opening ceremony and talk. Since they were both early, there was a LOT of time for Songco to make her case and “catch the worm”.

Environment Secretary Ramon Paje gives a silver award
to Tubbataha Management Office Head Angelique Songco.

Paje pledged to provide the P50 million needed to build a new station for 10 to 12 marine park rangers tasked to protect the 97,030-hectare Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park (TRNP) and World Heritage Site in Palawan from illegal activities including fishing and collection of precious and lucrative marine life such as top shells. 


For two months at a time, these men from the Philippine Navy, Philippine Coast Guard, Municipality of Cagayancillo and the TMO stay in a styrofoam-reinforced concrete structure on a sandbar on Tubbatha’s North Atoll. 

From this small, prefabricated structure measuring 15 meters long by six meters wide, the park rangers conduct regular patrols around the park, do scientific research and monitoring, brief visitors during the dive season, undertake surface and underwater cleanups, and report and respond to unusual incidents.

Photo lifted from PCIJ blog, credited to a
screen grab by Ed Lingao.

And yes, they eat, sleep and do their business in there too, with only a small portable satellite phone and a long-range radio keeping them connected to the rest of the world.

Wind and wave have taken their toll on the structure which seems to float in the middle of the Sulu Sea, only revealing its stilts on the sandbar which emerges during low tide. 

Paje may not have needed much convincing, as he presumably has been talking with Songco, given the recent incidents of US and Chinese ships running aground on the reef and the roles that the marine park rangers have been playing in both incidents.

He is well aware of the challenges to the conservation and protection of the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park, least of which is the grounding “of those ships”. “The greatest danger to Tubbataha is us,” he said. Ninety percent of the materials that endanger marine life are produced by humans, he added.

Paje thus thanked Shell for its continued support of the conservation of Tubbataha. Shell through its social arm, the Pilipinas Shell Foundation, Inc., assisted the TMO in developing its business plan; funded information, education and communication campaigns; and supported its capacity-building activities. 

"Flock Attack" by noted lensman Melvyn Calderon is one
of the photos featured in "Birds of Tubbataha"

The multi-media exhibit, for example, commemorates the 25th anniversary of the TRNP as a marine protected area with the “Birds of Tubbataha”, a collection of artworks and photographs by National Artist for Visual Arts BenCab and noted lensman Melvyn Calderon. It also presents the winning entries of “It’s More Fun in Tubbataha”, a school-based 30-second video plug contest showing the beauty that marks Tubbataha as a premier diving destination.

Shell also started Sustaining Conservation Gains in TRNP in 2011, a project that has so far benefited nearly 2,000 fisherfolk and over 7,000 students. The company continues to fund public outreach, capacity-building and research activities, helping to maintain Tubbataha’s ecological integrity for present and future generations.

Tubbataha lies at the heart of the Coral Triangle and is home to some 600 species of fish, 360 species of corals (about half of all coral species in the world), 11 species of sharks, 13 species of dolphins and whales, 100 species of birds and nesting Hawksbill and Green sea turtles. (end)