General Santos City
ENVIRONMENT
WITH ANGEL ALCALA
|
General Santos City is a famous city in the province of South Cotabato.
Every Filipino associates it with the sport of boxing. Everybody
knows the two world champions from this city, Lando Navarette and
Manny Pacquiao. Manny is currently the world's strongest champion
in his boxing class and conqueror of the best world class Mexican
boxers. But General Santos is also a remarkable city in many other
ways. It has a year-round sunny environment free of typhoons. It
has a first class airport. An excellent road system connects the
city to all parts of Mindanao. It is located in a protected bay,
Sarangani Bay, that opens into the Sulawesi Sea, a vast ocean that
connects the Philippines to Indonesia. Sarangani Bay is an aquaculture
site.
The Sulawesi Sea is part of the world's most biologically diverse
marine region. General Santos is the center of the tuna fishery
industry in the Philippines. More than 200,000 tons of the 300,000
tons of tuna caught in the country every year are landed in the
city. The tuna fishery industry is the main driver of socioeconomic
development in the local city. The city is a trade center and has
great potential for tourism and for cultural and educational development.
Its proximity to Indonesia enhances this potential.
I would like to focus on the educational and research opportunities
in General Santos because of its proximity to the Sulawesi Sea,
which provides a fantastic variety of marine species occupying microhabitats
from shallow waters to deep waters in excess of 5,000 meters. The
second species of the most celebrated fish group, the coelacanths,
has just been reported in the Sulawesi Sea off North Sulawesi Island.
The most obvious opportunities would be in the areas of marine
biology, oceanography, and fisheries and coastal/marine resource
management. Schools dealing with the academic and practical aspects
of these three areas could be established to train scientists and
practitioners. Scientists are needed to provide more understanding
of our oceanic environments and sustainability of their marine resources,
and practitioners to translate research findings into practice to
provide skills for livelihoods. In addition, the development of
biotechnology could be a priority academic pursuit of professors
in these institutions.
All these could be a challenge to the already well established
institutions in the Visayas where expansion of teaching curricula
and research activities in the marine sciences has been severely
limited. Collaboration with Indonesians from the Manado area would
add to the relevance and usefulness of the suggested academic programs.
In these days of global eco-tourism, recreational fishing activities
could be developed in conjunction with programs on deep and shallow
marine protected areas, which appear to need assistance from the
well developed institutions in the Visayas.
To run these proposed institutions, funds would be needed. There
are concerned individuals in General Santos and Davao City who can
assist in or arrange for the needed financial support. But established
institutions have to provide the experts in the marine sciences.*
|