CORAL REEFS IN THE PHILIPPINES: DIVERSITY, DAMAGE, CONSERVATION

CORAL REEF ENVIRONMENT OF THE PHILIPPINES

fish found at Apo Reef in the Philippines

Situated right at the apex of the Coral Triangle, the Philippines is home to roughly 25,000 square kilometers (about 9,650 square miles) of coral reefs, giving it the third-largest reef system in the world. These rich, biodiverse waters harbor over 500 hard coral species and nearly 1,800 types of reef fish, making the archipelago one of the most vital marine ecosystems on Earth

Compared to many other countries, "the diversity of the Philippine coral reefs is still quite in the upper level.” About 500 coral species are found in the Philippines. Of the eight species of marine turtles worldwide, five are reported to be found in Philippine waters: the Green Turtle, Hawkbill, Leatherback, Olive Ridley, and Loggerhead. A French-led research team identified some 1,200 different species of crabs and shrimps and around 6,000 mollusk species in the waters off Panglao, many of them not previously known to science, in the Bohol Sea. Together the Philippines and Indonesia embrace 21,000 islands and nearly one-fifth of the world's coral reefs and 77 percent of the Southeast Asia’s 100,000 square kilometers of coral reefs.

The most mangrove species in the world and the most bio-diverse reef systems are found in Philippine waters. The Philippines is the only place in the world with glass sponges, which have remained virtually unchanged for 375 million years. The marine environments around the Philippines are incredibly diverse. The world's second deepest spot underwater is in the Philippines. This spot, about 34,440 feet (10,497 meters) below the sea level, is known as the Philippine Deep or the Mindanao Trench. The Philippine Deep is in the floor of the Philippine Sea. The German ship Emden first plumbed the trench in 1927.

Coral Triangle

Coral Triangle and countries participating in the Coral Triangle Initiative

The Coral Triangle is a marine region that spans parts of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste with at least 500 species of reef-building corals. Seventy-six percent (605) of the world’s coral species (798) are found in the Coral Triangle, the highest coral diversity in the world. The Coral Triangle has 15 regionally endemic coral species (species found nowhere else in the world), and shares 41 regional endemic species with Asia. Certain neighbouring countries, including Australia and Fiji, contain rich coral biodiversity as well, but with somewhat lower numbers. [Source: WWF]

The Philippines is regarded by many as the the apex of the Coral Triangle, with 1,800 species of reef fish scattered over an area the size of Ireland. The Coral Triangle encompasses portions of 2 biogeographic regions: the Indonesian-Philippines Region, and the Far Southwestern Pacific Region. The epicenter of that coral diversity is found in the Bird’s Head Peninsula of Indonesian Papua, which hosts 574 species (95 percent of the Coral Triangle, and 72 percent of the world’s total). Within the Bird’s Head Peninsula, the Raja Ampat archipelago is the world’s coral diversity bull’s eye with 553 species.

The Coral Triangle has more coral reef fish diversity than anywhere else in the world: 37 percent (2,228) of the world’s coral reef fish species (6,000), and 56 percent of the coral reef fishes in the Indo-Pacific region (4,050). Eight percent (235 species) of the coral reef fishes in the Coral Triangle are endemic or locally restricted species. Within the Coral Triangle, four areas have particularly high levels of endemism (Lesser Sunda Islands, Papua New Guinea – Solomon Islands, Bird’s Head Peninsula, and the Central Philippines). Six of the world's 7 marine turtle species, including the leatherback marine turtle, found in places such as the Northern Bird's Head Peninsula / Waigeo region, Papua (Indonesia), as well as Lea region (Papua New Guinea), New Georgia (Solomon Islands).

The Coral Triangle is frequented by the blue whale, the largest animal to ever live on Earth. Other Coral Triangle whales include the sperm whale (found throughout Coral Triangle waters and the Savu Sea, especially Solor-Alor region), dolphins, porpoises, and the endangered dugong.

The main criteria used by scientists and conservationists to delineate the Coral Triangle were: High species biodiversity (more than 500 coral species, high biodiversity of reef fishes, foraminifera, fungid corals, and stomatopods) and habitat diversity The Coral Triangle supports livelihoods and provides income and food security, particularly for coastal communities. Resources from the area directly sustain more than 120 million people living in the area.

The Coral Triangle’s economic value is nothing short of phenomenal: 1) Tuna spawning and nursery grounds support a multi-billion dollar tuna industry and supply millions of consumers worldwide. 2) Marine resources contribute to a growing nature-based tourism industry, valued at over US$12 billion annually. The Coral Triangle is part of an area that has emerged as one of the planet’s economic hubs. Fast population and economic growth have fuelled unsustainable coastal development and boosted demand for expensive marine resources such as tuna, shark fin, turtle products and live reef fish.

New Species Found in ‘the Philippines Coral Triangle Area

In October 2007, U.S. and Philippine scientists announced they had discovered a number of new marine species in the Coral Triangle, regarded as world's most biologically diverse region. Oliver Teves of Associated Press wrote: “Larry Madin, who led the Inner Space Speciation Project in the Celebes Sea south of the Philippines, said scientists had been to one of the world's deep-ocean basins in search of organisms that may have been isolated there for millions of years.

Madin, of the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, or WHOI, said the Celebes Sea is at the heart of the "coral triangle" bordered by the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia — a region recognized by scientists as having the greatest degree of biological diversity of the coral reef community of fish and other marine life. [Source: Oliver Teves, Associated Press, October 16, 2007]

“The deepest part of the Celebes Sea is 16,500 feet (5,000 meters). The team was able to explore to a depth of 9,186 feet (2,800 meters) using a remotely operated camera. "This is probably the center where many of the species evolved and spread to other parts of the ocean, so it's going back to the source in many ways," he told a group of journalists, government officials, students and U.S. Ambassador Kristie Kenney and her staff.

Madin led the project that involved WHOI and National Geographic Magazine in cooperation with the Philippine government, which also provided the exploration ship. The team speon Tuesday after spending about two weeks in the Celebes Sea off Tawi-Tawi, the Philippines’ southernmost provincial archipelago, about 687 miles (1,100 kilometers) south of Manila.

Madin said they had collected about 100 different specimens, including several possibly newly discovered species. One was a sea cucumber that is nearly transparent which could swim by bending its elongated body. Another was an unusually black jellyfish that was found near the bottom of the sea. But the most striking creature they found was a spiny orange-colored worm that had 10 tentacles like a squid, he said.

Madin said the Celebes Sea, being surrounded by islands and shallow reefs, is partially isolated from the rest of the world's oceans and may have been more isolated millions of years ago, leading scientists to believe that "there may be groups of organisms that have been contained and kept within" the basin since then. "That makes it an interesting place to go and look to see what we might find," he said.

Verde Island Passage

The Verde Island Passage is a marine corridor in the Philippines located between the islands of Luzon and Mindoro. It connects the South China Sea with Tayabas Bay and the Sibuyan Sea and covers about 1.14 million hectares. The passage extends across waters adjoining the provinces of Batangas, Oriental Mindoro, Occidental Mindoro, Marinduque and Romblon. Verde Island lies near the center of the passage.

The Verde Island Passage is recognized as one of the world's most biologically diverse marine areas and is often described as the "Center of the Center of Marine Biodiversity." Its waters contain more than 300 coral species and support a wide variety of fish and other marine organisms. Strong tidal currents transport nutrient-rich deep water into the area, helping sustain extensive coral reefs and abundant marine life.

The nutrient-rich strait is also s a busy shipping lane leading to Manila and an important area for fishing and tourism. Its coral reefs and diverse marine ecosystems attract scuba divers, particularly around Anilao in Batangas and Puerto Galera in Oriental Mindoro. The combination of exceptional biodiversity and intensive human activity has made protection and sustainable management of the Verde Island Passage an important conservation concern.

Rich Mooi, curator of invertebrate zoology and geology at the California Academy of Sciences and leader of biodiversity study in the Philippines, wrote in the New York Times: The richness of reefs in the Verde Island Passage is unsurpassed. Fish, corals and sea urchins abound.” It “is a marine region felt to be the “center of the center” of Indo-Pacific marine biodiversity. The passage is already home to more documented species than any other marine habitat on earth, and its diverse list of species grows by the day. For example, we are just short of 800 species of sea slugs alone (of which a large proportion are new to science). I am astonished by the number of sea urchin species, which reached 37 just today. Although that figure is not as grandiose as other tallies, even in this small region I have seen more echinoderm species than ever before. I learned today from the Philippine scientists working with us here in Mabini that they found more than 50 species of reef-building corals in a single dive just this morning. [Source: Rich Mooi, New York Times, May 25, 2011]

I am especially interested in micro-echinoids — tiny, sand-loving urchins no larger than a pea. I have found only a “pod-full” of these so far, and one of the species is a new record from the Philippines, suggesting Australian geographic relationships. More support from this comes from studies of a much larger fire urchin, belonging to a group whose spines cause a painful sting. A few days ago, we found a species never before recorded outside of Australia.

Danajon Bank

The Danajon Bank is a double barrier reef system in the Camotes Sea in the central Philippines. It is one of only six known double barrier reefs in the world. The reef extends about 156 kilometers (97 miles) between Bohol, Cebu and Leyte and formed on an offshore submarine ridge through the interaction of coral growth and favorable tidal conditions. [Source: Wikipedia]

The reef system covers about 272 square kilometers (105 square miles) and has an aggregate coastline of about 699 kilometers (434 miles), including 40 islands. Three major passages, the Northwest Pass, Middle Pass and Northeast Pass, provide openings through the reef. The Danajon Bank accounts for more than 1 percent of the Philippines' estimated coral reef area. Numerous small islands are located within the Danajon Bank. Many are inhabited by fishing communities because of the area's marine resources, and some have relatively high population densities.

The Danajon Bank supports diverse marine ecosystems, including coral reefs, seagrass beds and mangroves. Its waters contain reef fish such as flatheads, anemonefish, parrotfish, angelfish and wrasses, as well as seahorses, sea cucumbers and sea urchins. Deeper sections support large sea fans, sponges and branching corals. Seagrass beds provide feeding and nursery areas for rabbitfish and seahorses, while mangroves provide spawning and nursery habitat for fish, shrimp and other crustaceans. It used to be particularly famous for sea horses

The reef has been affected by overfishing and destructive fishing practices, namely dynamite fishing, that have turned large areas of reef into waht seem like underwater war zones. Declining fish populations and damage to coral habitats have reduced fish catches and affected larger predatory species. In response, 34 marine protected areas have been established in the Danajon Bank. From 2003 to 2010, the USAID-funded FISH Project supported fisheries management and conservation efforts in the area.

Damaged Coral Reefs in the Philippines

Nearly all the reefs around the Philippines show a high rate of damage. It is estimated that 90 percent of the reefs around the Philippines have been damaged by sedimentation, explosives, agricultural run-off, toxic chemical and pollution, cyanide fishing and souvenir hunting. Filipino spear fishermen are often breath from tubes hooked up to air compressors abroad a small boat. Fishermen also use illegal fine mesh nets that trap uneatable young as well as adults. Some divers from China have inscribed their names graffiti-style on heads of coral. The reefs not only lack fish they also lack coral. Fewer than 5 percent of the Philippines reefs are in pristine condition. The same figure in Indonesia is around than 5 percent.

Pressure from fishing fleets and marine tourism jeopardizes the Philippines’ vast underwater gardens. "There are types of corals that grow about 10 centimeters in one year. So for example, you throw an anchor at a coral garden and you destroyed two square meters. It takes five to 10 years to get it to grow back," on conservationist told AFP.

Kennedy Warne wrote in National Geographic: I am crossing a desert, but not one made of sand. I am swimming through a wasteland of rubble, the pulverized remains of a coral reef. Its barrenness startles me.” It “has only refugees. I see a fish called a cleaner wrasse and feel a pang of sorrow. Its role in the reef ecosystem is to clean other fish, nibbling parasites and other marine hitchhikers from their bodies. But this cleaner has no one to clean. It swims in desolate solitude. The corals around it lie toppled like trees after a hurricane. [Source: Kennedy Warne, National Geographic, June 2022]

Off the coast of Palawan, the fingerlike island on the western flank of the Philippines, I caught a preview of what’s coming. I dived in a sepulchral world of bleached corals. Sea temperatures had exceeded the threshold at which coral polyps part company with the symbiotic algae that give them their kaleidoscopic colors. The corals were ice white. Streams of slime wafted from their dying heads. Even the fish seemed dazed in that monochrome landscape.

Some coral scientists say that mass bleaching events, which used to happen once every few decades, soon may happen every year, as the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to increase. What rising sea temperatures don’t kill, acidification will. Reefs will reach a tipping point where the carbonate coral structure starts to dissolve faster than it can be formed. When that happens, they will begin to disintegrate. The most diverse ecosystem in the ocean—a planetary feature for 240 million years—will start to disappear.

Dynamite Fishing in the Philippines

Fisherman in the Philippines have used dynamite and homemade explosive concocted from fertilizer and kerosene to stun fish and make them easier to catch. Huge chunks of reef have been blown off of reefs in waters off the Philippine island of Cebu by dynamite charges used to kill fish. Commented on the lack of sea life in waters where he fished, one fisherman from Zambales told Time, "In the past flying fish jumped over the prow of fishing boats heading out to sea. Now there is no longer such a spectacle. Aside from the waves, the sea appears calm and it is almost scary.”

Kennedy Warne wrote in National Geographic: Among the dead stumps something flashes in the sunlight, and I pick up the bottom of a shattered glass bottle. I have seen bottles like this filled with nitrate fertilizer and topped with a detonator and fuse. Light the fuse, then throw the bottle into the sea. The blast stuns fish or kills them outright, and they float to the surface for fishers to collect. [Source: Kennedy Warne, National Geographic, June 2022]

Blast fishing is deadly for fish and dangerous for fishers. If a bottle explodes too soon, you could lose a hand, an arm, or a life. A fisher died this way two days before I arrived here at the Danajon Bank, 20 miles east of Cebu island, in a region of the Philippines with a long history of destructive fishing practices: explosives, cyanide to flush fish out of coral crevices, nets so fine they catch anything that moves. All of these methods are illegal, all still in use. They are a cumulative disaster for coral reefs, a more instantaneous depletion of marine life than the slower-burn tragedies of declining fish stocks, pollution, and climate change.

Diving Fisherman in the Philippines’ Dynamited Reefs

Kennedy Warne wrote in National Geographic: I see a figure in the distance, gleaning in the dynamited ruins, and swim to him. He’s wearing a long-sleeved shirt, trousers, and a hood over his head, with holes for his eyes and mouth. He has a battered pair of goggles over his eyes and pieces of plywood strapped to his feet for fins. Jellyfish?” I ask, pointing to his hood. My boat driver had told me of tangling with a box jellyfish in these waters. He just had time to scream for help before passing out from the pain of stinging tentacles. He showed me the welts on his arm and stomach, still vivid after 15 years. Sun,” the diver answers. [Source: Kennedy Warne, National Geographic, June 2022]

To collect enough food for his family, he tells me, he often has to stay out half a day in the burning heat, combing the reefs. He tows a polystyrene box to hold whatever he catches: whelks, abalones, sea urchins, crabs, fish if he’s lucky. He uses a hook in one hand and a spear in the other. He pokes, prods, levers, and hacks at the coral. I see a sudden puff of black ink as he spears a cuttlefish.

He picks up a sea cucumber and hands the warty creature to me. A tassel of white threads adorns its rear end. Quicker than I can register, the threads shoot out and wrap around my hand, sticking to my skin like superglue—the animal’s reaction to being disturbed. I disentangle the creature, and it goes into the catch box.

The gleaner’s laborious search for food is something that is happening across the Philippines, and throughout the Coral Triangle, as ever increasing numbers of people hunt for ever decreasing quantities of fish. For millions of Filipinos, the sea is essential to survival. In the Danajon region, three-quarters of households depend on fishing for food and livelihood. They saw catch rates decline by a factor of 10 in a generation.

A quarter of the fish caught in Danajon come from illegal and destructive practices. Subsistence fishers, living at or below the poverty line, are driven by desperation to use such methods. Filipinos have the phrase kapit sa patalim, or “grasp the blade.” A desperate person will clasp even the sharp edge of a knife—breaking the law, risking arrest, destroying the reefs that are their lifeline. In some months of the year, gleaners can gather only about nine meager ounces of seafood an hour from the impoverished reefs. I watch this man suck another breath, flail his plywood fins, and descend.

Cyanide Fisherman

Fishermen in some parts of the world, particularly the Philippines and Indonesia, catch fish by squirting cyanide from plastic bottles into crevasses in the reef. The cyanide temporarily stuns the fish so they can be easily captured by hand or with small nets, often using a crowbar to pry apart the reef where the fish hide. Fisherman in the Philippines cover their faces like terrorists for protection from jellyfish stings and can stay underwater for long periods of time thanks to hoses attached to an air compressor known as a "hookah." The poison initially does not normally harm the fish but it hurts the living coral. Fishermen also use bleach and other chemicals to get fish.

Sodium cyanide capsules are cheap and easy to obtain in Asia. All one has to do create cyanide is crush a couple of these capsules and put the powder into a spray bottle of water . Cyanide fishermen then dive around a coral reef, find they fish they want and squirt the toxic mixture in it face or skirt it in an area of the reef teeming with fish. Fishermen often store the cyanide in cans on the ocean floor to escape detection by authorities.

Long-lasting cyanide kills fish, coral polyps and other forms sea life. The cyanide kills the algae of the reef on which fish feed. Then the coral itself starts to die. Cyanide fishing is also harmful to fisherman who handle the cyanide and have to search in deeper and deeper water to find fish. Recalling his fifth experience with the bends, one Filipino cyanide fishermen told National Geographic, "I went down 70 meters [230 feet] and worked for about two hours. I came straight up. A minute after I got in the boat, I went into shock." He has been paralyzed from the waist down ever since. One in ten cyanide divers either dies or is disabled.

Cyanide Fishing in the Philippines

Many fish sold live from the Philippines for restaurants and aquariums are gathered using cyanide. The practice began in the 1960ss and reached in peak in the early 1990s when 330,000 pounds of poison was placed on 33 million coral heads a year. The practice is said to have been invented in 1957 by a Chinese-Filipino businessman named Earl Kennedy who learned from aquaculturists that cyanide can be used to stun fish. After experimented in saltwater lagoons in Luzon, he began exporting angelfish and triggerfish to the West and by the 1960s was the world's leading exporter of tropical fish.

Men head out from towns like Siasi an Pangutaran in Sulu province in motorized outrigger boats with enough food and water for up to two weeks. When going after fish such as grouper they breath through tubes attached to a compressor. Grouper are found in reefs between 10 meters and 30 meters deep. They spread a solution of sodium cyanide and saltwater from a plastic tube. After a few minutes they have stunned and netted several fish. The fish are then placed in a submerged net attached to the boat. After about 20 minutes the fish spring back to life and are able to swim around normally. [Source: Anthony Spaeth, Time June 3, 1996]

Back on shore the fish are placed in holding pens. They are kept there for a couple of weeks until the cyanide is naturally flushed from their system and then sold to middlemen, who place them on trawlers with tanks or in seawater-filled bags bound for Asian restaurants. The middlemen often supply the fishermen with nets and cyanide

Environmental groups are trying to convince the fishermen in some places to replace dynamite and cyanide fishing with more environmentally friendly methods of fishing and fishing stocks have rebuonded. Fishermen assisted by the Marine Aquarium Council use environmentally friendly methods to catch fish and earn three times more than they did using cyanide, because fish that are guaranteed to be cyanide free fetch a higher price.

Coral Reef Conservation in the Philippines

Holger, Horn a former German army officer who runs a popular diving resort in Panglao on Bohol island, told AFP: "When I came here four years ago dynamite fishing was rampant And as you know diving and dynamite fishing do not belong together. So I started to fight back." Horn is now a board member of the Bohol Islands Marine Triangle program, funded by the UN Development Programme to conserve the marine life of Bohol Sea. [Source: AFP, May 8, 2005 |+|]

"In the beginning nobody cared. Then I took over to care for the reefs and now you can see great areas of improvement. It's really wonderful to see how nature is rebuilding," Horn told AFP. From the start, conservation was an alien concept to many residents, who have fished the sea for generations. "But the perception has changed," he says, a point driven home by the reality of declining catches. "Look at them today, the marginal fishermen. They come back with a handful of fish and they can't even feed their families," he says. |+|

AFP reported: “The government has restricted fishing in shallow waters to small fishermen, set up community-based marine sanctuary projects, and encouraged marine tourism including scuba diving and whale watching. Some 15,000 scuba divers visit Panglao and the nearby islands every year, drawn by 18 established dive sites in the area. |+|

"I found out that the Philippines has great laws, rules and regulations and ordinances but they really lack implementation,” Horn said. One reason, he says is that these laws are foreign to many residents. "You are dealing here with people who spent one or sometimes three years in elementary school, and sometimes they don't even know how to write properly. So how do you make them understand that these ordinances are so important?" |+|

"Our base for an effective tourism industry is the coral reefs. So if we don't have intact coral reefs, the resorts can't (attract tourists) and will have to close down," he says. Within the project site, only traditional means of fishing are now allowed. Permanent buoys are planned so vessels would stop using destructive anchors in the protected site. The Bohol Islands Marine Triangle board is supervising a zoning survey to delineate which areas to declare as sanctuaries, fishing areas, tourism sections or navigational corridors. Also planned are a user-fee scheme under which every scuba diver would be charged 50 pesos (about 92 US cents), and boats that damage corals by indiscriminately dropping anchors would be fined. Proceeds would pay for fish wardens to guard the sanctuaries and support communities involved in the project. |+|

“The Panglao municipal council also passed an ordinance requiring new restaurants or hotels to put up proper waste disposal systems. Horn says Panglao is learning its lessons from Boracay, another world-famous island resort in the central Philippines that hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons a few years back due to E. coli bacteria infection of the water. |+|

Successful Philippines Marine Conservation

Kennedy Warne wrote in National Geographic: Fishers work in designated areas near the Apo Island Marine Reserve, established in 1982 by the local community with guidance from biologist Angel Alcala of Silliman University. The sanctuary proved to be a spectacular success, inspiring more protected areas like it. There are two ways to respond to a diminishing resource: Ease up or double down. Filipinos have done both. The bomb-cratered moonscape I saw at Danajon Bank is the end result of one approach: destructive overfishing of reef ecosystems. But at Dauin, a municipality on Negros island, I saw a different legacy, one of reef protection that has eased pressure on marine life and sustained a living for communities on the coast. [Source: Kennedy Warne, National Geographic, June 2022]

The approach was pioneered by Angel Alcala, a Filipino biologist who has championed the creation of small, community-managed marine protected areas (MPAs). Often the prime reason for creating these sanctuaries is to preserve biodiversity, but for Alcala the main focus is to benefit fisheries. “Filipino people are fish-eaters,” Alcala tells me when I meet him at the research center he leads at Silliman University, just north of Dauin. “To maintain that, there need to be marine reserves.”

Alcala started in the early 1970s with two prototype reserves: one near an island that was inhabited (Apo, off the coast of Dauin) and one near an island that was not (Sumilon, near Cebu). All forms of harvesting were prohibited. The results were spectacular. In 10 years, fish biomass for some species in the sanctuaries—namely groupers, snappers, and jacks—increased at least sixfold. As the density of fish inside the reserves increased, fishers reaped the benefit through the phenomenon of spillover: Fish “spill over” reserve boundaries into waters where they can be legally caught. The idea that no-take sanctuaries could replenish fish stocks on nearby exploited reefs offered a bright speck of hope in an otherwise dismal outlook for coastal fishers.

Apo Island’s success caught the attention of Rodrigo Alanano, who was elected Dauin’s mayor in 2001. Alanano decided to increase the number of marine protected areas along the Dauin coastline. He could do this because municipalities have jurisdiction over their coastal waters out to 15 kilometers, or 9.3 miles.

I ask him how he persuaded subsistence fishers to give up a portion of their traditional fishing grounds. “I told them we needed to have breeding grounds as well as fishing grounds,” he says. “I told them, ‘If you have a sanctuary, populations will grow, and some fishes will get out of the sanctuary and those ones are for you. The reserve will be a breeding ground for fishes now and forever, for you and for the future.’ Later on, I told them, it would become a diving spot, and there would be an income from that.”

Still, getting fishers to accept an immediate loss for an uncertain gain was no easy matter, and many coastal dwellers opposed the sanctuaries. Alanano was served with lawsuits and received death threats. He shrugs at the memory. “When I became mayor, I gave my life for this profession,” he says.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, Philippines Tourism Office, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated August 2026