General Santos City

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.*