Sustainable Fisheries Report 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Sustainable Fisheries Programme was added to the core project activities of People and the Sea in 2019. It offers a holistic approach to achieve the goals of marine conservation in Malapascua Island. Many families still rely solely on fishing as their primary source of income, despite tourism having quickly developed over the […]
PepSea Project Update, Apr – Dec ’20
Here is the latest edition of our PepSea Project Update – we are calling it ‘The COVID edition’! Needless to say it has been a difficult year for everyone. It is now nine months since we hosted any volunteers, and there is still no certainty as to when we can move back to a fully […]
Community empowerment for positive change
This is the next installment of a blog written by our Site Manager, Daff, where he reflects on the value and impact of community level engagament initiatives in the Philippines. The first part of this blog can be found here: https://www.peopleandthesea.org/community-engagement-philippines/ The society’s strength is determined by its people. As most of us are aware […]
Community Engagement in the Philippines: Building a culture of sustainability
Daff joined the People and the Sea team as Site Manager in early 2020. With our volunteer expeditions currently suspended, it’s been an unusual time on site. But this has given him more time to get to know the community of Malapascua and take a closer look at the work we have been doing. Here, […]
Typhoon Ursula Assessment Report
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Early on the morning of Christmas Day 2019, Typhoon Ursula (orPhanfone) passed through the Philippines with wind speeds ofup to 175 km/h, leaving a trail of destructionin its wake. The Visayas, and the north of the Province of Cebu in particular, were among the most impacted landscapesand communities. But typhoon Ursula did not […]
PepSea Project Update, Oct ’19- Mar ’20
Here is the latest edition of our PepSea Project Update – we hope you enjoy it! As ever it should give you all the major PepSea news and highlights… It has been a busy period on site, and this edition is a little late in being published! As such, it does cover a longer period […]
Quantifying threats to reef-building corals in the Visayas
ABSTRACT Coral reefs are large marine ecosystems, ecologically viable for more than 25% of marine species and habitats. Scleractinian are of the most important. These are reef-builders characterised by their ‘hard’ structural exterior of polyp colonies – marine invertebrates on their skeleton thriving off of calcium carbonate stored in oceans from successive colonies. The significance […]
Tool Use by Four Species of Indo-Pacific Sea Urchins (JMSE Journal Article)
INTRODUCTION While somewhat late in making it to the People and the Sea website, here you will find the full manuscript of our first, peer-reviewed scientific paper to be published in a recognised journal. The research, led by Glyn Barrett (a previous Lead Science Officer on-site for People and the Sea) and Klaus Stiefel (a […]
PepSea Interview – Project Manager
A graduate of the Univeristy of the Philippines, where she studied Biology, Aleja joined the People and the Sea team in 2018 as Project Manager. She brought with her plenty of experince of working within the field of marine resource management having previously been employed with the Provincial Government as a Coastal Extension Officer. Approaching […]
Marine Habitat Mapping with GIS (MSc. Project)
INTRODUCTION The goal of creating a habitat map is to identify the distribution of different type of habitats within a defined area (Nicet et al., 2015). The term ‘habitat’ in ecology brings together all the species, their biocenoses* but also their biotope*. Marine habitat maps are required to provide a better understanding of the marine […]
Crown-of-Thorn Population Assessment (MSc. Project)
ABSTRACT Crown-of-thorns starfish (Acanthaster planci L.), or COTS, is a predatory starfish that feeds on corals across the Indo-Pacific. If the COTS population density increases sufficiently for their feeding rate to exceed the average growth rate of the coral, this is referred to as an ‘outbreak’. These outbreaks are a major cause of coral mortality […]