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Sunday, January 19, 2003
Estremera: At death's door
By Stella A. Estremera
If residents and visitors alike will continue with their ways, Hagimit
Falls will soon become one large garbage dump-cum-cesspoll. And that would be very sad.
LAST Monday saw me on the barge to Samal with buddies Lani and Bobby and their visitor from Manila.
Our itinerary was set. Lunch at Punta del Sol in Babak, a hike and a dip at
Hagimit Falls in Peñaplata, and then snorkeling, again at Punta del Sol. If that isn't enough to impress any concrete-dwelling Manile¤o, I don't know what could...
The short trek up Hagimit Falls is ideal for visitors. In less than five minutes after you park your car, your visitor can behold the waterfall, albeit on the small side, and then take a dip.
The Hagimit we saw, however, wasn't as impressive as we remembered it. The water was still clear and the cool, but... we were not the only ones who knows its very accessible existence, the garbage all around the trail and floating on the sides of the stream was proof positive. Plastic bags, foil and candy wrappers, empty shampoo sachets, just about every thinkable garbage man could throw.
We crept up the rocks where the garbage has not yet reached and where we cannot view them and soon enjoyed the cold pool.
My wish to crawl down the rock toward a pool that was enticingly shallow enough for me and bigger than the pool I was trying to fit my body in, however, was soon dispelled after I tried to explore the area behind the rocks we were perched on. It stank like some public comfort room. The menfolk who came before us have found out that those rocks can easily hide their badoodles as they answer the call of nature. I scrambled back on our perch for fear that the call of nature those menfolks were answering was more than excess water.
If residents and visitors alike will continue with their ways, Hagimit
Falls will soon become one large garbage dump-cum-cesspoll. And that would be very sad.
We soon headed back to snorkel at Punta del Sol. It was fun, there were colorful, although small fishes, and patches of corals.
I watched the corals below, forgetting my fear of depths, flipping merrily like some oversized butete.
My elation, however, was soon blown to smithereens.
Under one coral rock that I was watching, I saw something that I once saw in the Internet.
"Bob!" I called out. "I want to show you something."
As Bobby swam toward me, I dipped my head once more and pointed out to him what I was watching.
"Is that a crown of thorns?" I asked.
Bobby confirmed it was. And all I could feel was pity for the coral it has attached itself to.
I swam away to wash off the despondent feeling only to see on top of one relatively large coral table another crown of thorns.
"The crown-of-thorns seastar feeds on polyps. It spreads its stomach out through the mouth over a lump of living coral, secreting digestive juices, kills the coral and then sucks in the resulting "soup". After feeding it moves on leaving a patch of white, or a coral skeleton. The Crown of Thorns seastar usually feeds twice a day for several hours. Depending on its size the Crown of Thorns can eat from 2 to 6 sq. meters of coral a year. That can be up to 180 times as much coral destroyed compared to its own size per year." (From the Internet)
In a few hours, the coral that the crown of thorns has chosen will be dead.
I pitied the corals. Death was right on top of it and it couldn't do anything but gasp its last breathe.
The crown of thorns has very few predators because of its hard and spiny scales and poisonous glands. One of the few is the Giant triton shell, Charonia tritonis, otherwise known as Budyong. Yes, that shell that is among the favorites of souvenir makers, the same ones that grace the shelves of shellcraft stores.
The triton, however, is now very rare. And there are also not enough predators of the crown of thorns hereabouts, and even in the Great Barrier Reef at that, to markedly reduce their numbers.
The feeling of frustration was overwhelming. We couldn't even lift out the offending coral-predator because we didn't have any thing to do so (1. Never touch a crown of thorns, its defense mechanism is some sort of steroid that could cause sever pain, nausea and vomiting and yes, at its worst, can deform your bone; 2. Never stab or slice it up in the waters, if you stab it, it will spawn; if you slice it in two, it will become two; 3. The best way is to lift it out of the water and leave it to dry on land. It has been found out that dried crown of thorns make very good organic fertilizers -- poetic justice, indeed!).
A waterfalls that could be well on its way to becoming a cesspool because of irresponsible people; coral reefs that are threatened by a predator because man has virtually removed all of the predators' predator... That is the sad reality we continue to face and yet we go on with our capricious ways believing that Mother Nature will always be there for us. |
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