Hi folks. I’m going to tell you about our recent weekend trip to Tando, Nueva Valencia Guimaras, one of the coastal areas affected by the spilt bunker fuel from the tanker that sunk off the coast. I’m going to show you some pictures that we took. They are not what you would call pretty, but I think it is something that you ought to see.

Before anything else by the way, the Research Team.
sans me because i took the picture...

The sun was bright and the sea was choppy on the Iloilo straight as we crossed it on our way to Guimaras. It was like a roller coaster ride (though I’ve never had a ride on a roller coaster before, poetic license, mea culpa mea culpa) with intermittent sprays of sea water. But it was okay. The land trip had us all feeling like popcorns. Baking, stifling heat all the way in a crowded rigged up truck disguising as a passenger jeepney. And just when we thought we’d have some relative comfort when most of the passengers disembarked the road turned so bad we were bouncing off in all directions inside like so many newly popped oily corns juggling inside a shaker bag filled with cheese powder, only that it was sweaty human oil and powdered lime dust clinging on our bodies. Something ought to be done about the roads there and I ought to say something, but I’m digressing.

When we arrived at the place the first thing that greeted us was the sight of mangrove trees covered in bunker fuel.
As you can see the trees are covered from the roots all the way up to part of the trunk.

I don’t know whether these trees will have a chance to survive.


These mangrove saplings however will never make it, its roots and leaves covered in fuel, unable to breathe.


The oil was on rocks

and trees.


Despite the sad sight it was cool wind and cool sun all the way. Perfect weather for sampling sea grasses. That was what we did by the way, sampling sea grasses. Tando is where Dr. Josette T. Biyo did her study for her doctoral degree. For two years she monitored the growth of sea grasses in that area. (BTW: sea grasses are an important source of food for marine animals in tropical sea waters. Sea grasses then are good bio indicators of the health of tropical seas.)

I’m not an expert of sea grasses and all we did was count them. I think they are still in good shape but some of the sea grass beds are not when we looked around for an ocular inspection of the study site.



We saw people of the community cleaning up,digging up the oil soaked sand,
wiping the oil covered rocks and cutting down the oil covered trees.

These men and women in blue are being paid by Petron,
the oil company that contracted the sunken tanker to take 2 million liters of bunker oil to Mindanao. I’m hazy on the facts here so you could check the websites of national dailies for solid ones.

We tried our hands on the absorbent paper Petron provided to wipe the rocks with. It’s a sticky and grimy business and all it did was take away the fuel that has not seeped into the rocks and soil my sarong. After that, the rock is still covered in a thin layer of fuel that won’t go away even if you wiped away into eternity. Lousy job for 200 bucks a day, but if its your livelihood on the line... We talked to one of the residents engaged in this clean up, Mr. Bolina (sorry sir I forgot your first name), and he said that after wiping the rocks they are going to spray it with a chemical to dissolve the fuel, said chemical to be provided by Petron. (I’m no chemist either to provide you with much insight on this one, but won’t this chemical and the fuel contaminate the water after spraying?)

This picture here shows Dr. Biyo talking to one of the Petron representatives of the area.
About 500 meters down the shore “Surprise! Surprise! Isn’t that a media crew I see yonder?” So that’s why there so many people milling around. It turns out to be an ABS-CBN crew and Karen Davila (hey, did spell this right? Sorry, haven’t watched television lately after so many of the mindless shows dominating the airwaves) of the correspondents. Doc Biyo is getting some serious national exposure here. So Karen interviews Doc Biyo and hmm… looks scripted to me, but then that’s how they probably do it anyway. You could watch next Tuesday for the episode of The Correspondents and that interview. We did not dare show our handsome faces to the camera (sigh... it’s too bad they can’t afford our talent fees) so we had to contend ourselves with interviewing the local folks. One of our sainted teachers, Mrs. Virna Navarro, did a pretty number on the barangay captain.

“Why is it that it is only these (blue shirted) people are doing the clean up?” she asked with the indignant air of a government inquisitor out for blood. Kapitana answers that “Gingbayran ni sila ya sang Petron mo.” Now seething inside Maestra asked “ti ano plano sang barangay?” “Gahulat kami sang bulig sa Petron kag sa Sunshine agency,” Kapitana answers. What do you think? I’ll just keep my opinions to myself.

We did our samplings at around 3 pm after the interviews were over. We gathered water temperature readings, dissolved oxygen and salinity and collected sea grasses.
Not being a bio major with limited (read, zero) knowledge in field work, it was a good experience for me. The core sampler was a particular bi**h but Mr. Harold Mediodia says were lucky the sand is soft.
I wonder what I’ll do if some of my research students want to go boring for samples in hard sand.
There were many sea stars and sea urchins around, so one has to be careful where you put your feet on. It’s either “Awww, poor starfish” if you step on it or “Owww! my poor foot” if you step on a sea urchin.
aint they cute?
acupuncture anyone?

these are brittle stars
hand friendly red sea urchins












Not growing up beside the sea, it was the first time for me to see a carpet of seagrasses literally grow out of the low tide. Its like a green field suddenly emerged from the blue sea as the tide receded.















I havent seen this in the beaches of Iloilo. I wonder if it will be around to last forever with this oil spill.

The job was done at around five thirty and these guys are just posing for the camera.

Some of the local folks were spear fishing by then in the low tide. I don’t know if the fishes are still safe to eat. The folks here are mostly fishermen. They depend on the sea for their livelihood. They could still catch fish but no one is buying. So they are forced to eat their fresh and maybe contaminated catch when what they’d rather do is eat fish out of tin cans. But there's no money to buy for tinned fish. The irony is as thick as the bunker fuel the covers the place.

I’m still new to this marine bio research business. But I know that the shores of Nueva Valencia are way out of order. And if that sunken tanker with still most of its fuel cargo still in its holds is not taken care of soon, much of the shores of Guimaras, and then maybe (I’m no weatherman and expert of sea currents either) the shores of Iloilo and Negros islands will suffer too.

Will these beautiful gals still have a beautiful sea to come back to?