The Heart of Marine Biodiversity

Center of the center

The report is based on a 10-year multi-disciplinary study conducted for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that involved 101 of world’s leading authorities on marine life, and produced 2,983 maps of marine species for the western Pacific Ocean. (ODU News 2005)

Kent Carpenter, Old Dominion University associate professor of biological sciences who headed the study, says, “Scientists have long known that the area in Southeast Asia that includes Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines holds the richest marine biodiversity. I was amazed to discover that the extreme center of this biodiversity is in the Philippines, rather than closer to the equator. However, a geographical information system (GIS) analysis of this extensive database clearly shows this pattern.” (ODU News 2005)

Carpenter and co-author Victor Springer of Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History used a GIS overlay of 2,983 generalized distributions of marine species to examine the pattern of diversity in the Indo-Malay-Philippines Archipelago (IMPA). Their analysis revealed the central Philippines as “the area of highest diversity and endemism.”

The Philippine center of diversity was found to have the highest species richness for all distributions combined, as well as for shore fish distributions treated separately.

“Because of its greater area, Indonesia may eventually be shown to have a greater overall marine biodiversity than the Philippines. However, there is a higher concentration of species per unit area in the Philippines than anywhere in Indonesia,” the report says.

It also notes that of 120 restricted-range endemics included in the study, the Philippines has 38, compared to 19 in Indonesia/Malaysia, 18 in Australia, 18 in New Guinea/Bismark/Louisade, 17 in the Coral Sea/New Caledonia/Vanuatu, and one or two in seven other localities.

Rich seas

The full extent of the Philippines’ marine biodiversity is not known, but the best information available reveals an astounding variety of marine life: 5,000 species of clams, snails and mollusks; 488 species of corals; 981 species of bottom-living algae, and thousands of other organisms. Five of the seven sea turtle species known to exist in the world today are found in Philippine waters.

The lists are likely to grow, as new surveys discover new species. In 1953, Herre recorded 1,815 marine fish species in the Philippines (out of a total of 2,145 fish species); today, about 2,824 marine fish species are listed for the Philippines at FishBase, including 33 endemic (one of which is endangered), 1,729 reef-associated, 169 pelagic, and 336 deepwater species.

In 2004, a survey in Panglao, Bohol observed 1,200 decapod crustaceans or different species of crabs and shrimps; some 6,000 mollusk species, including sea slugs and microshells; and hundreds of other previously unrecorded marine species. The survey also found fossils of snails extinct in other parts of the world, and numerous species that were photographed alive for the first time.

Another survey was conducted in 2005 under the same project in the deep waters (up to 2,200 meters) off the Bohol-Mindanao-Cebu triangle. It recorded some 1,000 mollusk species, 600 crustacean species, more than 100 echinoderm species, and over 100 fish species, many of them considered rare or very rare, or new to science.

Geologic phenomenon

Such richness, according to experts, can be explained by geologic history: the isolation of smaller seas within the central Philippines in the Pleistocene ice ages, and complex geological events leading to the integration of islands that created the archipelago. “The amalgamation process created barriers when the larger islands took shape and potentially separated populations and provided conditions for allopatric speciation,” Carpenter and Springer suggest.

And they continue: “The accretion of the archipelago would also have concentrated diversity, assuming that the different elements of the Philippines developed their own endemic biotas.” The report’s goal was to understand the natural forces, such as lithospheric plate movements, prevailing currents, and the geography and geology of the area that contributed to the evolution of the biodiversity. “This discovery poses some very interesting questions about the origins of marine life in our oceans. Perhaps the Philippines hold the key to unraveling mysteries about how marine biodiversity patterns change through space and time,” Carpenter says.

As reported also in ODU News, biodiversity in fact is of major interest to many people. Many marine organisms have yet to be looked at for pharmacological purposes. Some sharks appear resistant to cancer. It turns out that sharks are becoming endangered because of over-fishing. Some marine organisms might hold the cure to cancer, but we are destroying them before we get a chance to study them.

A real threat of extinction

Indeed, the Philippine center of marine biodiversity is highly threatened by a host of factors ranging from destructive fishing practices to soil erosion and global warming. The comparatively high number of species found only in the Philippines indicates a real threat of extinction, including that of species yet to be discovered by scientists. Carpenter and Springer liken the Philippine seas to the Amazon, which is as rich in unique life and equally endangered. “Understanding factors that control patterns of endemism and richness should … help prioritize sites for conservation even when data are sparse, as they are often in the marine environment,” they say. “Solely as an example of peak diversity and endemism, there is ample justification to prioritize the Philippines for conservation. As a probable epicenter of allopatric speciation and island integration bio-concentration, it is imperative to conserve the habitats and diversity that can help us to understand the processes that govern biodiversity in the marine realm.”

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Skimming over the slick?

“Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle.”
                                                      John Paul II, 1990 World Day of Peace message

As the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico continues to play out, the unfathomably devastating consequences of the oil spill are inescapable, even for those of us thousands of miles away from the lost and shattered lives of humans, animals, plants and entire ecosystems.

That the reality of this spill remains clearly before our eyes is important, not only as a sad reminder, but, even more so, as an urgent challenge for us, one for which the future of our planet rests. This is a moment to connect the dots and see things differently.

It’s easier – or at least more comfortable – to focus sole blame upon the failed actions of BP and its contractors, or those entrusted with regulatory oversight. But it gets a little more difficult when you look a little deeper. Conversations that revolve around cutting our use of fossil fuels still don’t dig deeply enough.

A few weeks before the Gulf spill, sitting informally around a seminar table at a large Ivy League university, experts researching the alarming effects of industrial toxins and failed environmental cleanups struggled with how to best communicate their findings to the public at large. “How can we present facts in a way that will impact on people, on their actions and their lives?” they asked.

Similarly, environmental journalist Andrew C. Revkin, in a recent post on his Dot Earth blog described a new website that allows visitors to superimpose the oil slick onto their hometowns – or rather their own home states – to better appreciate its magnitude. Revkin wrote of his ongoing efforts “in a world overdosing on information, to make information matter.”

This is perhaps the greatest challenge before us. We can choose to skim the surface, or we can stop for a brief moment, try to understand the meaning of the catastrophe before us and then take action.

As mentioned in the editorial to this issue, Jostein Gaarder pointed out there is a vertical dimension to the Golden Rule: “You shall do to the next generation what you wished the previous generation had done to you … Those who come after us are also our fellow human beings, and we have no right to hand over a planet Earth that [has] less worth than the planet Earth that we, ourselves, had the great fortune to live on.”

And at a recent Yale conference, “Environmental (Dis)locations, an ethicist said: “Never before in the history of our planet has humankind been asked to enter into such a long-range project [of ecological conservation] that involves change and sacrifice, one for which the long-term [positive] effects will not be seen for years to come.”

Time is slipping away. Words need to become lifestyle.

I wrestled with these thoughts while present, by chance, with elementary school principals who had gathered to hear teachers speak about using a simple educational tool in their classrooms, the Cube of Love. Developed originally by Chiara Lubich to help youngsters translate the Gospel into daily life, the six-sided cube can be thrown every morning to display a phrase for the day: love of neighbor, love for one’s enemy, loving your neighbor as yourself, etc. The teachers spoke of the immediateness with which children remembered the words and translated them into actions. Whole classrooms changed as a result, beginning from relationships between students and then overflowing onto whole schools and into the children’s families.

“The Cube,” one teacher explained, “is not only our point of departure each morning but it is now also the basis upon which we approach our social and global study lessons. We remind one another that we are all brothers and sisters all over the world. The children learn it’s possible to be protagonists of a new culture: one based not on having, but rather on giving.”

As a young college student years ago, idealistic and filled with dreams of working for global environmental issues, I quickly realized that, alone, I would never manage to change the world. Encountering this spirituality of communion, I remember thinking that here, in the Gospel put into practice, were solutions not only to violence and hatred, but also to global issues of poverty and the destruction of our planet. The planet was a gift given to all – and all of creation spoke of God’s love.

“The hope in my heart,” concluded one teacher that day, “is that the concrete experience of the Gospel lived out in the lives of my students and through their projects will prepare them to contribute one day to building a better world.”

I reflected on our spirituality of communion and the Cube. This spirituality, like the mustard seed, seemed more powerful than ever. Here lay an answer to the challenge of transforming words into life, ideas into actions. Suddenly the pieces began to take shape.

A civilization of love, a culture based on giving rather than having. A planet in which we interact with one another, with the creatures that inhabit it and its natural resources giving the respect deserving of a world created and guided by love. Children, families, people who understand that the planet Earth has been given to us as a gift and the relationships and laws of nature have been created out of love and for love – a lifestyle based on giving rather than on having.

Let us ask for the courage to translate words into our lifestyle, to give of ourselves so that we may build this new world together.

Susan Kopp

Susan Kopp is an affiliated scholar at Yale University Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and professor of Health Sciences at LaGuardia Community College (City University of New York).

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