Seafood News - Industry Events - Seafood Market

The Daily Inquirer    27/11/2004 09:16:57

Ma. Diosa LabisteJurgenne Honculada Primavera began her career in natural science immersed in aquaculture research, particularly breeding shrimps in mangrove areas. But she fell in love with the mangroves and became their most avid protector, even against the shrimp culture industry.

For her stand, Primavera became the only Filipino scientist to receive an honorary doctoral degree from the Stockholm University in Sweden, capping more than 10 years of mangroves studies that earned her the reputation of being a turncoat in the shrimp industry.

Primavera, a senior scientist of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (Seafdec) in Tigbauan, Iloilo, was conferred a Ph.D. in Natural Science, honoris causa, on Sept. 24.

Her citation reads: "In cooperation with scientists from Stockholm University she has shown that mangroves are key areas for recruitment of fish and shrimp and that development of convention shrimp farming may have far reaching negative economic and social implications.

In order to create sustainable alternatives, she is now doing research on more sustainable integrated farming of shrimp, fish, crabs and mangroves."

Primavera was given a crown of laurel leaves, symbolizing freedom; a diploma in Latin, as written evidence; and a ring, symbolizing loyalty to science.

But she outdid other awardees when she was presented a bouquet of red, white, blue and yellow flowers-the colors of the Philippine flag-by Philippine Ambassador to Sweden Victoria Bataclan.

The ceremony took place at the Stadshus or City Hall, where the Nobel Prizes are also handed out. The country flags of the six foreign honorary doctors-Finland, Israel, Norway, the Philippines, Switzerland and the United States-fluttered in the Blue Hall.

The university awarded eight jubilee doctorates (to those who earned their Ph.D.s 50 years ago), 162 new doctorates and 13 honorary doctorates during the two-hour rites.

Primavera is the only Southeast Asian to receive the honorary degree this year and the only Filipino in the university's roll of more than 150 honorary doctors.

Warning bells

Primavera was one of the few people to ring warning bells on mangrove loss and other adversities in aquaculture in the Philippines at a time when shrimp culture was being touted as a sunshine industry.

Despite what her detractors said, she did not cast the shrimp industry in a bad light because her studies showed that mangroves and brackish water fishponds can coexist.

When she moved to Seafdec from the Mindanao State University in Marawi City in 1978, Primavera spent many laboratory hours working on shrimp breeding.

She was already aware of mangroves then, at first as "weird trees," and later as trees to be felled when aquaculture advanced. Mangrove studies in the Philippines were sparse compared to, say, coral reefs, a popular area of study in marine ecosystem.

Mangroves-trees, shrubs, palms, herbs and ferns-that grow in intertidal flats and can tolerate high salt concentration, are found to be highly diverse in the Philippines. The country has 35-40 of the 70 species found all over the world.

But a few years into research, Primavera learned that conversion of mangrove areas to brackish water fishponds was the major cause of the decline of mangroves. In the 1900s, the Philippines had at least half a million hectares of mangrove land. A 1998 National Forest Resource Inventory estimated that only 139,000 ha remained.

Loss factors

The loss was attributed to many factors. Coastal communities, as well as bakeries and wood-fired sugar mills, depend on mangroves for fuel.

Mangrove areas were also converted to agriculture and salt ponds, or cut down to give way to reclaimed lands for ports and commercial areas.

But according to Primavera, the greatest mangrove loss has been due to large-scale development of bangus (milkfish) ponds at 4,000 to 5,000 ha per year from the 1950s to the 1960s, the period when the government gave incentives to milkfish producers in the form of loans.

About half of the 280,000 ha of mangrove areas lost from 1951 to 1988 were turned into aquaculture ponds.

Mangroves cease to become a common fishing area when powerful individuals stake their claim to an area by paying land taxes, giving them some sort of a right to hand it down to a member of their family or "sell" to another person, a violation of the law.

The transfer of the property is possible when an area is declared "alienable and disposable," and up for issuance of a land title.

Primavera had a chance to closely study mangroves when she enrolled in the Marine Science Institute for her doctorate in Marine Science at the University of the Philippines Diliman in 1990. She studied the link between mangroves and penaeid shrimp.

"I did my penance for my role, albeit indirectly, in promoting mangrove loss by way of a Ph.D. on mangroves as shrimp nurseries," she said.

Pariah

In her workplace and in the shrimp industry, Primavera was a pariah.

Environmentalists were quoting her mangrove studies to attack the shrimp industry during its heydays. When it became a sunset industry, as a result of the plague of shrimp diseases, among them the luminous bacteria outbreak, Primavera's work was waved in an "I-told-you-so" fashion.

While Primavera sometimes gave the Greens permission to quote her studies, she was not active in antishrimp industry campaigns. But she felt she wasn't being recognized for her work on conserving the mangroves.

There were conferences that she wasn't invited to because she was suspected to be anti-aquaculture. Sometimes, she had to assure her bosses that she was not what they thought she was. "I was marginalized," she said.

It made Primavera happy that Seafdec hosted the 2000 mangrove-friendly aquaculture workshop, which recommended researches on the capacity of mangroves to process nutrients from intensive shrimp culture ponds, as well as mud crab (Scylla olivacea, S. tranquebarica" and S. serrata) rearing in pens and cages in mangrove areas.

Primavera eventually convinced her colleagues that she was for sustainable management and responsible use of mangrove areas, allowing the community and shrimp and fish farming to flourish. However she wants pristine mangrove areas to be off-limits to aquaculture.

Left to thrive, mangroves are useful to coastal communities. They serve as a buffer zone; they stabilize sediments and reduce shoreline erosion.

Fish, shrimps, prawns and crabs are found in mangrove areas. During low tide, fishers glean shells and clams, among them the popular mangrove clam "imbao" (Anodontia edentula), relished for its savory meat and aphrodisiac properties. "Tamiluk" shipworm, a local delicacy, is hunted in mangrove areas because it bores into the decaying wood of Rhizophora and Avicennia trees.

Timber, wood, medicine, cork, paper and rope all come from mangroves. Aside from providing roofing materials, nipa (Nypa fruticans) produces sap that is being fermented into vinegar or "tuba." Mangrove barks are sources of tannins and dyes.

Prolific writer

Primavera wrote more than 60 scientific articles, review papers, manuals, book chapters and technical reports, and co-authored 20 papers. Many of the subjects touched on impacts of fish and shrimp farming, the ecological value of mangroves, marine conservation and management, and livelihood opportunities from mangroves.

Her ties with the Stockholm University started in 1991 when she wrote a paper on the ecological and socioeconomic impact of shrimp farming for Ambio, the journal of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science.

The paper came to the attention of Prof. Nils Kautsky, chair of the Department of Systems Ecology, and Dr. Carl Folke of the Beijer Institute, who sent her a note of appreciation. Primavera met them five years later.

The university started sending graduate students to the Philippines and arranged exchange visits of researchers between Sweden and the Philippines. The collaboration also resulted in co-authorship of review papers in the internationally respected journals, Science and Nature.

Since 1997, Primavera has worked on two mangrove sites in Aklan as field laboratories. These are the patches of mangroves of Ibajay town and Buswang in Kalibo town.

The 75-ha mangrove area in Ibajay is highly diverse, hosting 27 species, among them the magnificent Avicennia rumphiana, locally known as the "api-api" or "bungalon," noted for its fine-grained wood used in furniture-making.

Primavera chose the Ibajay mangroves as research site to save the trees from being cleared by a barangay official. Since then, a mangrove tree house has been built, but her work did not stop the official from building fishponds in the area.

Buswang has a 14-year-old mangrove forest, the most successful plantation in the Philippines, but it was also threatened by fishpond development. Primavera asked students, from elementary to graduate school, to visit Buswang for research.

She nominated the Buswang mangrove plantation for the Excellence in Forest Management Award given by the Food and Agriculture regional office in the Asia-Pacific. Now that Buswang is in the international radar of conservation, pond construction has stopped.

Handbook of mangroves

Primavera also put together a team to write the "Handbook of Mangroves in the Philippines-Panay." The book saw print early this year, a handbook-cum-field guide-cum-coffee table book presenting taxonomic references on 35 mangrove species.

The publication was funded by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and has Seafdec as one of the publishers.

Primavera's co-authors are Resurrecion Sadaba, Ma. Junemie Lebata and Jon Altamirano. Lebata and Altamirano are with Seafdec, while Sadaba is a professor of the University of the Philippines Visayas.

It took them the whole of 2003 to write the book which they had sent to more than a thousand government agencies, nongovernment organizations, communities, schools and research institutes here and abroad.