Rare Conservation Fellow Renante “Tian” Cempron, a former youth leader and the tenth child of a fisherman, has spent the last two years promoting sustainable fishing in Hambongan, Philippines. Continue reading
Ayoke Island’s MPA was named one of the Philippines’ top 10 marine protected areas, no small feat in a country with 1,600 MPAs, the most in the world. But as recently as December the community faced a real test when the MPA was dynamited during the town’s fiesta, when no one was volunteering at the guardhouse. Continue reading
One of the biggest challenges facing sustainable fishing in the Philippines is the prevalence of dynamite fishing, where fishers create an improvised bomb out of a rum or Coke bottle and ammonium sulfate. Continue reading
“The challenge is that it’s all about poverty. Also, it’s all about the livelihood. They are using destructive fishing, for example, to eat, to find money, to buy clothes, for their children. That’s one of the challenges.” If the above … Continue reading