Mangrove Swamp – Responsibilities Of Fishers & Responsibilities Of Media

Abundant fish, crabs & other crustaceans are what you will always find in a mangrove swamp – if the fishermen observe religiously conservation practices.

(Bohol mangrove forest bottom image[1] from Boholphilippines.com)

I have had firsthand experiences with mangroves and appreciate their natural wealth that people can enjoy, varieties of sea foods and recreation. I was Editor In Chief of the Forest Research Institute (FORI) from 1975 to 1981; for the 3 FORI publications – monthly newsletter Canopy, quarterly technical journal Sylvatrop, and quarterly color magazine Habitat – I had to travel with my staff to Luzon, the Visayas and Mindanao to cover and/or check the progress of research and/or developments in forest ecosystems. So we saw and took photographs of, among other sites, mangroves.

If you didn’t know, among other things, says the US National Ocean Service[2]:

Mangrove forests stabilize the coastline, reducing erosion from storm surges, currents, waves, and tides. The intricate root system of mangroves also makes these forests attractive to fish and other organisms…

And many of those fish and organisms are food for us humans. Oh, I love the giant crabs! (inset crab image[3] from The Fish Site)

Now then, considering mangroves, under Manila Bulletin’s Environment And Nature, Specials section, on 14 July 2021 appears this article: “NGCP’s Mangrove Project Now A Protected Area And Ecotourism Site” – a very welcome piece of news if you ask me.  Written by ANN (Author Not Named), all 397 words of it, published with 3 huge pictures (the first one seen uppermost), that piece of news is very heartening for me who visited several mangrove areas in the late 1970s as I worked for FORI. When fishermen exploit the fisheries resources of a mangrove with careful attention to conservation, avoiding overfishing, the mangrove swamp with its natural wealth will outlast all those fishermen!

Unlike in the topmost photograph, where you see the little family is planting some seedlings, that’s all. It’s all water up to the trees in the background. There is a lot of work to do – and plenty of years to wait for the mangrove trees to grow and encourage fishes, crustaceans etc to live there and multiply. 

Where the photograph comes from, the title of the feature story is this: “NGCP’s Mangrove Project Now A Protected Area And Ecotourism Site.” 3 huge photographs are included, none of them showing any mangrove visitor – none showing mangrove trees either!

The article says members of a fishers’ association were engaged to plant initially 50,000 mangrove seedlings for the reforestation project in 2018.

After three years of continuous management and monitoring, the site is now home to more than 46,000 mangroves of three different species.

Do you see a mangrove swamp in this picture? Neither do I!

And there is no mention of mangrove denizens like crabs and crustaceans having come back – this is “an ecotourism site”?

The last part of this essay is a lesson for journalists as well as feature editors of media: If you don’t show what you’re talking about, what are you talking about?!@517


[1]https://www.bohol-philippines.com/mangrove-forests.html

[2]https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/mangroves.html

[3]https://thefishsite.com/articles/philippines-reopens-trade-in-juvenile-mangrove-crabs

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