Why Philippines will never be the best diving destination

a huge eagle ray was just one of hundreds of rays being sold...

I've just ended a short diving trip to Moalboal and was supposedly going to drop by Dumaguete to wish well a friend who invited me over for some diving, but decided to just head out to Cebu ...

City and enjoy the local scenery. Met up with some local acquaintances and was granted lodging for a few days. We had a few drinks that night  which led one of them who got hungry to decide we go to Barangay Pasil for some fresh seafood eats.

Pasil was apparently Visayas' biggest fish market, located 30 minutes from Cebu City, that was in the early morning without the jams.After getting slightly lost from traversing the narrow dark alleys, me and the locals finally found some parking right in front of the Barangay Pasil Police Station. It was 2 am and the streets were busy. It reminded me much of the Aurora market in Cubao during the late 80s where I used to accompany my mom every weekend. We saw that the original Pasil market in the corner closed, apparently it was damaged during the Oct Earthquake which claimed 4 lives but just a short walk to a narrow alley yielded our shabby street side eatery, several steps away was an ice factory where a lot of giant blocks were on standby ready to be made into crushed ice and a few meters more, the relocated fish traders of Pasil.  On the streets, I was greeted by thousands of sweetlips, groupers, blue spotted rays, giant trevally, several great barracudas, and this was but the tip of the iceberg.

My heart sank to a new low as I trudged along the market aisles, where one seller  sold a battery of chevron barracuda, thousands of small rays, giant marble rays and several eagle rays. At the far left corner of the market from the entrance was where the sharks were sold...thats when I took out my cam phone and just snapped away, oblivious to the silly vengeful looks given by the fish traders. 

After a few minutes of going around, we finally settled at the suggested street eatery. The locals shared the market operates 24 hours a day, usually does two main drop offs and pick ups, where the best are already reserved for the Hong Kong and Singapore market, and what we saw were just the left overs, on sale for local public consumption. The guys shared sometimes, the locals inject the fish with formalin, a way to keep the fish looking fresh in case sales were torpid. I did the simple math that day and I saw around 100 sharks, multiplied by 30 days, x trading done two times daily, so thats around 6,000 sharks sold every month at Pasil.. and those were just the left overs.

 Many thoughts were running through my mind as I was walking around Pasil... Were they legitimate? Where do they get so many of the supposed close to endangered species? Who were buying?  I've seen many of these markets during all my travels from province to province but this market is to date the most shocking sight for me in terms of volume of fish being traded. As the Cebuano divers shared, it's an open secret. The market was 50 paces to the nearest police station so its probably legitimate? In a way, I reached a jaded state, when I was quite new to diving, I would passionately try to make a difference. Despite all the new marine park fees being charged around the Philippines, with local government units knowing the potential of tourism money, this open secret trading area validates the fact that supposed stewards funded by marine park fees may be sleeping on the job or simply may not have enough muscle to do anything vs deep pocketed traders.

How to feed a nation of 90 million, and exporting fish stock to other Asian countries daily by the thousands? millions? The title of my blog was quite confined to the Philippines which in reality is quite unfair... this is happening across all neighboring countries with supposedly good diving. Friend divers around Asia share how their respective governments in their own countries also abuse the income generated from 'marine park fees', all are so ready to collect but there are no echoes of a post report which should be readily available for public consumption.

With what I have collectively seen so far, I may be wrong to assume we might not see sharks & rays in the  next decade... the next generation of divers may watch old videos on youtube, scratching their heads, wishing there was a time machine nearby, just flick a switch and go back to the good old days when you can see sharks in any coastline of the Philippines...

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