PINOYAPACHE GOES SCUBASURERO

AS THE WORLD’S POPULATION increased, so is garbage produced by humans. These garbage found its way to the coastlines and in our world’s oceans. It is so sad to note that most of our food comes from the sea where most of these waste end up strangling the marine creatures to death or, worse, are found inside its intestines. It is inedible matter and it is death knocking at you soon.

Coastal cleanup campaigns have been here for many years like the annual SCUBASURERO, which was first adopted here in Cebu thirty-two years ago. It is no different from the previous events and it is still participated in by professional and novice scuba divers, resort workers, celebrities, marine biologists, environmental advocates, civil servants, coast guard and navy frogmen, media, bloggers and, for this year, a couple of bushmen.  

Today, September 16, 2017, I got invited by Project Blue for the SCUBASURERO. This is in observance of the 32nd International Coastal Cleanup Day which would be held on selected foreshore and coastal areas of the country. For this particular activity in Cebu, I will get to witness and participate as a blogger and as participant at the Bluewater Maribago Beach Resort, Barangay Maribago, Lapulapu City.

Also coming with me is one of the founding fathers of the Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild – Ernie Salomon. Both Ernie and I are not here on a picnic. We are here to literally wet our pants on an environment that is part of the domain of bushcraft. This time we will not forage food. Instead we will seek out garbage and barely visible items that do not belong to the sea. We will be spending time as volunteers for the coastal cleanup.

Erik Monsanto and Ryan Salutin of Bluewater Maribago Beach Resort welcomed us and invited us to take breakfast at Allegro, the resort’s main dining hall and restaurant offering buffet-style service. Joining us on the table is Balbino “Ka Bino” Guerrero, a noted local tour guide specializing in cultural and historical Cebu. He is wearing his trademarked hat popularized by Dr. Jose Rizal. It is always a wonderful time in Allegro.

 

This is my first time to join a SCUBASURERO and I am prepared for salt-water immersion. Volunteers slowly arrived and boarded a water taxi from the beach to a sandbar that became an island across the lagoon. Overhead, a couple of F-50A/E Eagles whizzed by, currently the pride of the Philippine Air Force. The sandbar is now populated by people with wetsuits and there is someone talking from a megaphone.

We crossed over there and the program is about to commence. Free tanks of oxygene were provided by Bluewater Maribago Beach Resort to support this advocacy and divers were much happy to use it and add the minutes to their dive logs. Tents were also provided as shaded resting areas. Drinking water, meanwhile, are made available free for everyone. It is a very warm day and the coolness of the sea beckoned everyone.

The cleanup commenced after a general briefing by the Lapulapu City DRRMO and the assignment of areas to the volunteers. When I was younger, I yearned to swim underwater like them but opportunity never knocked on me. As I piled up in years, I content myself with skin diving. It is expensive, you know. You do not spend for it one time. You need to visit the reefs and deeper water regularly and you spend more for that.

Facing the Hilutungan Channel is a marine sanctuary. No one had cleaned up this part and I waded underneath the jetty and found unbroken bottles, rusty cans, a piece of plywood and beer cans amidst a forest of sea grass. As I go deeper, I see transparent nylon lines and slowly pull it from underneath the grass. At its end are ingenious contraptions that caught a 6-inch grouper and an elver. 

The underwater traps were left there for a purpose. It is illegal to catch fish with any means from a marine sanctuary. Whoever that person be, he was using his head. I admired the person’s ingenuity and the stealth to achieve that. So bushcraft. But that does not mean I totally agree with him. Let us respect our laws and let us protect marine sanctuaries. These are the breathing places so our stocks of marine resources could recover.  

As I returned with the retrieved garbage and the traps with its catch, Erik hand me a rubber suit large enough to fit me, plus a pair of fins, a mask, a breathing apparatus, a full oxygene tank and an instructor. I was caught off-guard and, then it came to bear on me, that I fancied these things when I was younger. You see, one of the skills that I was very interested of learning in my early years was scuba diving.

I never have that chance, specially now that I do not have the means to engage in it. But, today, I have all the opportunity. Why not? Bring it on. My instructor proceed with his job as he gave me field instructions and safety procedures which would have taken an hour or more to learn in a normal learning environment. After 10 minutes on dry ground, I used the valves to deflate and inflate underwater, navigate in two meters depth and remove water from my face. Standard entry level instructions.

After a half hour of tracking an underwater trail, fighting the current and my buoyancy and re-learning to breathe through my mouth, I felt I have done much for the day. It was a good experience to be swimming underwater with oxygene and I felt a little of motion sickness and a little of nausea. One thing that I missed that would have stabilized my diving were dead weights. Lacking that, I exerted more effort to fight buoyancy and the tide.

My windpipe is burning and dry as I detached the tube from the mask to the breathing apparatus. Slowly, I remove tank and flippers and set my sights to the dispenser, hoping I could squeeze cold water. By now, the volunteers began to gather the garbage on the sand. Someone begins to document the things placed on a weighing scale. A voice from a megaphone elicits a lot of clapping hands, signifying a successful event.  

The tables are now ready for a boodle-fight meal and everybody picked his own place around the tables and proceed with stuffing themselves with the food. I joined the sharks in a feeding frenzy in the middle of the day on the middle of the sandbar. I looked around and I see Ernie. He is wearing the same dry clothes I last saw him. I thought he was also given dive gears. I did not know that Ernie is one of those typical people who are afraid of water. Typical bushman.

We later learned that the garbage retrieved today totalled close to one ton. That is a lot. Where could the garbage came from? A few were dropped accidentally, carelessly and more of that were deliberate. Most of the garbage were brought in by tide and current. We do not know how much volume of plastic garbage passed by the coastlines of Maribago that have escaped our discovery? It could be more. I know it is more.

SCUBASURERO could only do less. It is done just once a year. It is also expensive because organizers and establishments provide pressurized oxygene tanks so garbage could be brought up to dry ground from the shallows and depths by volunteers who are into scuba diving. Nevertheless, because of dedication, some individuals and organizations have not lost faith and continued to pursue this advocacy for 32 years.

These garbage came from people and places far away from here and I know it started from streams and culverts near our homes. It is washed away during heavy downpours and dumped where stream meets channel waters. When will we start disposing our garbage properly? We love to eat food from the sea and do you know how much poison we unintentionally eat every week? Please do not allow plastic and other waste to reach the sea. Help in your own small way.

The 32nd International Coastal Cleanup Day is brought to you by the Ocean Conservancy, the Lapulapu City Government, the Community Environment and Natural Resources Office, and by the greenest resort of Mactan Island – Bluewater Maribago Beach Resort, spearheaded by their own Project Blue.

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