Sea of Cortez, Baja California Sur
April 16 – 20

Waking up to a view of ocean and islands and sunrise may be the ultimate luxury. And the night sky. Millions of stars visible in the absence of light pollution, with Venus so bright its light reflects on the sea just as the moon. This was my first time on a boat trip like this – five days on the Lindblad/National Geographic Sea Lion off the coast of southern Baja. 

I was there at the invitation of Rare, which had organized a “Symposium at Sea” to bring together scientists, policymakers, resource managers, businesspeople, and philanthropists for a robust brainstorming session about their new initiative. Rare’s conservation model is to create community-based campaigns, called Pride campaigns, which support local leaders and build public support for conservation using iconic local species. Their new initiative is still in development, but vaguely the plan is to leverage Rare’s expertise with Pride campaigns for sustainable management of small-scale fishing by combining Pride campaigns with no-fishing reserves, and with establishment of property rights for local fishers over their local fishing grounds. Thereby, the Pride campaigns would build community support, the reserves would help replenish the fish populations, and the property rights would promote stewardship and sustainable practices outside the reserves. Very reasonable, but as always, the devil is in the details. Hence, the Symposium, and, perhaps more significantly, the burgeoning partnership among Rare, Environmental Defense Fund’s catch share program, researchers from University of California, Santa Barbara, and California Environmental Associates. As an inter-disciplinary intellect, I’m always excited by collaborations like this, and see great potential here.

But this trip was not just symposing. Between the discussion sessions expertly facilitated by the Aspen Institute were incredible snorkeling and hiking jaunts. We hiked from beaches to peaks on uninhabitated islands, then refreshed ourselves with swims.

We visited Cabo Pulmo, a community-managed and enforced no-fishing area that contains the Northernmost reef on the West coast of the Americas where we snorkeled with large multi-tealed parrotfish, and a milling school of a thousand 2-3 foot jacks. Swimming with that school was one of my most awe-filled snorkeling experiences. They were in 60 foot deep water with 20 foot visibility, looking like a delicious meal. I was waiting for a shark to burst up from the depths to assert its predatory dominance. But I’ll pretend I got back in the boat somewhat quickly solely because of the chilliness of the water. Lesson: marine protected areas can work to restore and protect ecosystems.

We also snorkeled at a sea lion colony. Large, lumbering and thigmotactic (my new favorite word, similar to cuddly) on land, they are enormous and graceful underwater. They swim like elongated footballs, with a spiral even more elegant than my throw (shocking, I know). However, it was heartwrenching to see several young sea lions with fishing line around their necks, clearly cutting into their flesh as they grew. Ocean protection takes much more than just no-fishing zones – activities outside of such zones must also be managed because both creatures and pollution know no boundaries.

“The plan is to leverage Rare’s expertise with Pride campaigns for sustainable management of small-scale fishing by combining Pride campaigns with no-fishing reserves, and with establishment of property rights for local fishers over their local fishing grounds.”

The heartwarming counterbalance to that was the afternoon spent on a beach near Loreto visiting the community of a Rare Pride campaign. Local Rare staff had organized a panel of local fishers and organizers of fishing cooperatives. They were incredibly well-spoken, explaining how they organize themselves, enforce the reserve and restrict use by non-locals, and market their products. Their business acumen regarding value-added products (e.g. ceviche) and supply chain control (e.g., they are selling direct to Los Angeles) was impressive – especially in that it arose organically. We witnessed the signing of an agreement between several cooperatives to become partners regarding enforcement. The community seemed to really take ownership/pride in this project. And the children were very engaged. At the end of a puppet show featuring hero Pescador Responsible, the children chanted along “I will only eat legally caught seafood,” and they ran to hug the chocolate clam mascot when it appeared. Hopefully with Rare’s new initiative this scenario, perhaps even down to the beach BBQs with Michael Jackson soundtracks, will be replicated around the world. 

And, this. So many dolphins.

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Every year Rare trains local conservation leaders around the world in methods to inspire change at the local level and shift behaviors that are destructive to the environment.  These Rare Conservation Fellows manage campaigns that use traditional marketing techniques to build pride around natural resources and essentially sell conservation. The campaigns focus on reducing threats that communities can influence like deforestation, overfishing and illegal poaching.  The fellows adapt demonstrated conservation solutions to the nuances of their own communities.  The fellows use social marketing messages to inform the targeted segments of the communities by getting to know the local people, meeting with key stake holders and listening to community needs.  The fellows provide training in more sustainable practices, offer economic incentives and give the local communities access to new tools and technologies.  The fellows inspire people to take pride in the species and habitats that make their communities unique. With the fellows’ guidance, communities in more than 50 countries are taking charge and managing their own natural resources.

“Communities in more than 50 countries are taking charge and managing their own natural resources.”

In this video eight fellows reflect on the question of what it takes to change people’s attitudes towards conservation issues from their own experiences in the field.  Meet Elaina Todd from Guam, Angkana Makvilai from Thailand, Gankhuyag Balbar and Bolortsetseg Sanjaa from Mongolia, d’Shan Maycock from the Bahamas, Margaret Tabuanakawai from Fiji, Gildas Andriamala from Madagascar and Santi Saypanya from Lao PDR.

The fellows discuss the use of everything from text messages (also known as short message service or SMS) to campaign posters, T-shirts to adorable and now iconic mascots.  Drawing attention to a campaign issue often means embracing new technologies and innovating creative communication strategies.  The fellows worked with local partner groups, students and community leaders in order to create impactful messages and to give the communities ownership of their future.  The fellows also celebrate their personal discovery and change as they grow into social marketers for behavior change and conservation.   People either deter or drive conservation, after all.

Watch the video:

Read more about these specific fellows and their campaigns on www.rareplanet.org:

My name is Elaina Todd
and I am changing the way people protect their forests,
their lands and their seas in Guam.

My name is Angkana Makvilai
and I am changing illegal hunting in Thailand.

My name is Gankhuyag Balbar
and I am changing fishing practices in Mongolia.

My name is d’Shan Maycock
and I am changing the way fishermen harvest lobsters
in Abaco and the rest of the Bahamas. 

My name is Bolortsetseg Sanjaa
and I am changing hunting practices in Eastern Mongolia.

My name is Margaret Tabunakawai
and I am helping change the way people
protect the marine resources in the Fiji islands.

My name is Gildas Andriamalala
and I am changing the way people fish in Madagascar.

My name is Santi Saypanya
and I am changing illegal hunting in Lao PDR.

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Paul Butler with campaign mascot Rabita the Rabbitfish in the Philippines.

Excerpt from the interview:

Thane Maynard asked Butler, “When I think of Rare I think of community-based education, so that must be a part of your strategy when you say you’re involved in conservation.”

Butler responded, “Exactly. Our focus really is on behavior change, changing people’s behavior from unsustainable resource use to some alternative more sustainable resource use.  So, it might be working with fishing communities in Indonesia or the Philippines encouraging them to set aside and/or respect no-take-zones in order that they can harvest the spill-over and use fish stocks more sustainably.  Or working with farmers in upland watersheds in the Andes working on reciprocal agreements whereby they accept some form of modest compensation for protecting the watersheds paid for by downstream water users. And so really our niche in the conservation community is behavior change. We use social marketing in order to promote that.”

“Really our niche in the conservation community is behavior change. We use social marketing in order to promote that.”

Butler went on to discuss assessing and measuring campaign success in terms of sustainable, meaningful conservation results.  He also described his work in the 1970s on the island of St. Lucia where Butler ran his first Pride campaign, encouraging the people of St. Lucia to take pride in an endangered species unique to their island, the St. Lucia Parrot.  The St. Lucia campaign became the template for hundreds of Pride campaigns around the world.  ”Working with partner organizations, Rare has launched more than 215 Pride campaigns built around the initial premise that if you work with people’s rational and emotional side you can make a difference,” says Bulter. “Behaviors can be changed. Threats can be reduced and conservation can occur.”

The weekly show is hosted by Thane Maynard, the director of the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanic Garden.

Listen to the full interview here: http://ow.ly/ajk2Z.

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Rare Conservation Fellow Maritza Tovar stole the show with a lively interpretation of the importance of riverbank habitat.

The river was represented by a blue sheet. The parade participants wore vegetation and the mascot — the marvelous spatuletail — brought enough enthusiasm to lead the Rose Bowl parade. The young man in that costume needed some serious rehydration at the end of the day.

The video soundtrack is a campaign song that Tovar created to inform the community about the benefits of protecting watershed habitat not just for biodiversity, but for communities as well.

Tovar’s campaign aims to reduce deforestation and forest fires in the Tilancancha watershed.  To do so, she partnered with Rare to run a Pride campaign that inspires pride in the community through social marketing tools and will ultimately change behaviors of upstream farmers and downstream water users. The campaign offers sustainable alternatives such as fish farms, reforestation, bee boxes and private conservation areas.

To learn more about Tovar’s Pride campaign in Chachapoyas, Peru, visit the campaign page.

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After meeting with Marybeth in Lanuza, our crew headed back to Butuan City, where we split up – Paul to Manila on his way back to the UK, and Fel, Lito and myself to Cebu. Fel, a  program manager for Rare, was nice enough to stick around in Cebu with me for a day and take me to the wet and dried fish markets in the old part of the city, where we could see the flip side of overfishing in the Philippines.

Fish market in Cebu, Philippines. © Suzannah Evans

Cebu, the oldest city in the country, is the site where Ferdinand Magellan landed in 1521. He converted a few hundred native people to Catholicism before being killed in a battle a few weeks later, but his legacy endures: the Philippines is quite possibly the most Catholic place I’ve ever been, and I’ve been to Rome. Every office building includes images of Christ and the Virgin Mary, and religion is woven into even the fashions of the young Filipinos, like the rhinestone cross earrings I saw on a young woman on our jeepney ride to the market.

The central market in Cebu encompasses several blocks of ramshackle stalls containing everything from bursting funeral flower arrangements to cages full of fighting roosters. Here’s where you can buy one of the Philippines’ famous street food delicacies: balut, or a fertilized duck egg hardboiled and eaten at three weeks’ gestation, feathers and all. (I didn’t have one. I earned my stripes the previous day by tasting several varietals of durian, a fruit so foul-smelling it’s often banned from taxis and public buildings. “Smells like hell and tastes like heaven” is what they say, and while the smell was pretty revolting, the fruit itself wasn’t half-bad. Our van smelled like roadkill for the next two hours, though, so the value of this experience was questionable.)

Most of the activity in the fish market takes place overnight, so the wet market – meaning fresh fish – was only a few stalls by the time we arrived. But the dried market, which contained fish that has been cut longitudinally, gutted, salted and dried, was filled with basket after overflowing basket filled with fish: anchovy, grouper, rabbitfish. Most of the fish is immature because smaller fish are coveted, which is an extra blow to fish populations already suffering from overfishing. Fel bought some dried squid to take home, but most of the shoppers were women who were visiting from Manila. The fish at the market had become so expensive that only tourists could afford it: rabbitfish, the mascot species for Vince’s campaign in Cortes, costs 520 pesos a kilo at the Cebu market, or about $5 per pound.

“In the past, fish is a poor man’s meal. Squid and rabbitfish have become food of the rich,” Fel said as we watched the tourists pull up in taxis to quickly buy fish before their clothes started to smell of the market. “A half kilo of squid is half the budget for a week for a common family.”

“Most of the fish is immature because smaller fish are coveted, which is an extra blow to fish populations already suffering from overfishing.”

This echoed a conversation I’d had with a couple of fisherman’s wives on General Island a few days earlier. They told me how they saved about a quarter of their husbands’ catch to feed the family while the rest was sent to market. Typically they kept the less commercially-valuable fish for themselves, like anchovies. It underscored how borderline the livelihoods of the fishers are – one poor catch and they may be forced to sell it all, leaving little or nothing for the family to eat.

Over the week, I got a lot of great information while talking with the fishermen and their families, as well as the mayors and Rare’s hardworking fellows. Thank you again for the wonderful opportunity, and I’ll look forward to following the campaigns as they proceed over the next year.

This is part 5 in a series of dispatches from the Philippines.  

• Read Part 1: Creating ‘Fish Banks’ in the Philippines
• Read Part 2: From Dynamite Fishing to Sustainable Fishing
• Read Part 3: Fish as a Lifeline for Filipinos
• Read Part 4: Securing the Future of Filipino Fishers

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The last site I visited was overseen by Rare Conservation Fellow Marybeth Rita. Marybeth has a tough job because her campaign covers three towns separated by a hilly unfinished highway that she traverses by motorbike. After some heavy overnight rain, our van could hardly make it through the deep mud (with no guard rail down to the bay!) so I appreciated the difficulty of Marybeth’s assignment.

Rare Conservation Fellow Marybeth Rita leads a meeting with fishers.

The mayor of Lanuza, Salvacion Azarcon, met us at her office in the morning. She was a really inspiring woman, and not just because she offered us some local palm wine at 8:30 in the morning. Called pirik-pirik, the wine was mixed with raisins to give it a very mildly sweet taste. It was good enough that we kept the bottle and had more later in the day.

Marybeth and the mayor were working together not just to enact 24/7 volunteer guarding at the marine protected area (MPA), but to start a critically important program to register fishermen. Right now, most local fishermen aren’t registered in any way, so it’s hard to tell if they are legally in the municipal waters or not. Once registered, fishers will get an awning designed by Marybeth and the Pride campaign she is running in partnership with Rare that promotes the protection of the MPA.

“By protecting two banks – the ‘fish bank’ of the MPA and the monetary one afforded by the loan – the fishers will be a little more insulated from poverty.”

The registration program will also allow fishers to become eligible for a low-interest 2,500 peso loan (about $58). This is a key element of keeping poverty at bay, because unfortunately many fishers can end up in hock to unscrupulous lenders who make loans at outrageous interest rates.

The mayor’s plan will offer a low-interest alternative that also requires fishers to plant backyard gardens with things like lemongrass and eggplant in order to stay part of the program; this is important because it gives the fishers food and something to sell at market when fishing is bad or during the months of November to February, when there is no fishing at all.

And in a stroke of inspiration, the mayor is requiring fishers to actually pay back 2,600 pesos. The extra 100 pesos will go directly into the fisherman’s savings, starting a nest egg for the future.

“This is our simple plan,” Mayor Azarcon said. But I think it’s not just simple, it’s ingenious and sound. The fishers make less than $5 a day, and one dollar of that is usually spent on fuel for the boats that have outboard motors. By protecting two banks – the “fish bank” of the MPA and the monetary one afforded by the loan – the fishers will be a little more insulated from poverty. And that’s a very good thing.

This is part 4 in a series of dispatches from the Philippines.  

• Read Part 1: Creating ‘Fish Banks’ in the Philippines
• Read Part 2: From Dynamite Fishing to Sustainable Fishing
• Read Part 3: Fish as a Lifeline for Filipinos
• Read Part 5: Exploring a Filipino Fish Market

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Problems viewing this video? Watch it on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2UuPy8oM5w

“>here.

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Ayoke Island may be the most idyllic place I’ve ever seen. It’s a small island in the northern part of Lanuza Bay covered with a riot of coconut and palm trees.

Ayoke Island, Philippines. © Suzannah Evans

The town is a small cluster of bamboo and thatch homes. I was lucky enough to get to snorkel in the aqua waters of the Ayoke Island marine protected area (MPA) with Lito, a Rare staffer, while fishers held a community meeting in the guardhouse. Unlike the waters of Cortes, which contain mostly an undulating seagrass meadow, Ayoke is home to a stunning reef with ten-foot table corals and seemingly endless clusters of branch corals.

But even in this paradise, there are signs of trouble. We saw very few fish, although I did spot one fat sea cucumber resting on a table coral. I didn’t see any giant clams, although Lito said he saw a dead one. Broken patches of branch corals littering the ground were evidence of dynamite fishing.

Even so, 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. No one knew about the bombing until a family that was new to town showed up at the market with several boxes of fish that everyone immediately recognized as the result of dynamite fishing. As fishers told Cherry Ravelo, Rare Conservation Fellow for Ayoke and nearby General Island, they felt like they had been robbed.

“ 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..”

If anything, the incident has helped galvanize Cherry’s Pride campaign, which started last fall in Ayoke and General Island. I asked some fishers at General Island, a slightly bigger community than Ayoke about a 20 minute boat ride away, how their catches have changed over the years. They told me that before the MPA was established in 2005, they only caught about one kilo of fish a day. Now, just a few years later, they catch four kilos of fish a day, enough to keep some to eat and sell some at market.

As we walked the streets of General Island, we were swarmed with kids who were too young to even be in school. The impression that the town was almost wholly comprised of children wasn’t far from the truth. Each woman has five to six children each in this devoutly Catholic community, and the town has grown from 30 houses in 1960 to more than 120 today.

Paul Butler, the founder of Pride campaigns, who came from his home base in England for these site visits, said that we needed the fish to be as productive as Filipinos. It’s a joke, but it’s also a serious issue for the Philippines, which has seen its population triple since 1970. It goes to the very heart of the issue of saving fisheries to keep these growing communities out of the throes of welfare and poverty, as fish is one of the few natural resources within the grasp of average rural Filipinos.

This is part 3 in a series of dispatches from the Philippines.  

• Read Part 1: Creating ‘Fish Banks’ in the Philippines
• Read Part 2: From Dynamite Fishing to Sustainable Fishing
• Read Part 4: Securing the Future of Filipino Fishers
• Read Part 5: Exploring a Filipino Fish Market

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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. The sound wave created by the explosion stuns the fish, which float to the surface, but it also destroys corals and seagrass meadows that can take years to recover from a single blast.

Rare Conservation Fellow Vincent Duenas educates the community about MPAs. © Suzannah Evans

Dynamite fishing has been a problem in Cortes, a town on the southern half of Lanuza Bay. There’s a lot of pressure to fish here no matter the cost, because the area produces no other local meat or fruit – everything except some coconuts is sold at the market in Tandag, a half-hour drive to the south. As a result, 80 percent of the residents are fishers, and much of the fish they catch is used to feed their families.

This makes Cortes a perfect location for a Rare campaign, and the mayor, Pedro Trinidad Jr., is an enthusiastic participant. Along with Rare Conservation Fellow Vincent Duenas, the mayor has upped enforcement of the local MPA – one of Cortes’ eight MPAs – with 24/7 volunteer guards. The mayor has even gotten approval to start a landmark program that would require families on welfare assistance to volunteer for shifts in the guardhouse, the first program of its kind in the country.

“Illegal fishermen are now stewards of the sea,” the mayor said as we met over lunch. “Those who were dynamiting the fish are now guarding the MPA.”

Vince’s work to educate the town about dynamite and illegal fishing has been so successful that fishermen who were part of the problem have now come around. “Illegal fishermen are now stewards of the sea,” the mayor said as we met over lunch. “Those who were dynamiting the fish are now guarding the MPA.”

Later, we went to visit the guardhouse in Uba, a tiny town of 150 fishing families a short drive from Cortes. Vince’s campaign mascot, a friendly oversize rabbitfish named Rabita, made an appearance – swarmed by children – and we met with a dozen fishers and their wives and daughters in the guardhouse, located on a rocky outcropping just outside town.

After Vince led a conversation with the fishers where they helped design a billboard announcing the MPA rules, I sat down with two of the older fishers in town with Rare’s Fel Cadiz and Lito Mancao to help translate from the local language. The two men remembered catching 20 kilos of fish a day in the 1970s, down to about 1 kilo a day until the area’s eight MPAs were established, starting in 1986. Now they catch about 5 to 7 kilos of fish a day, still down from the peak, but enough to send some to market and keep some to feed their families.

I asked Eleuterio, a 65-year-old father of 12 and grandfather of 27, why he volunteered in the guardhouse. “Even at this age, I still guard so the children will see this is the right thing to do so they will not be illegally fishing too,” he said.

This is part 2 in a series of dispatches from the Philippines.  

• Read Part 1: Creating ‘Fish Banks’ in the Philippines
• Read Part 3: Fish as a Lifeline for Filipinos
• Read Part 4: Securing the Future of Filipino Fishers
• Read Part 5: Exploring a Filipino Fish Market

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One of the popular fish mascots on Mindanao island. © Suzannah Evans.

The northeast coast of Mindanao island in the Philippines is home to a series of small towns comprised almost completely of fishing families.

Last week, I visited several of the municipalities along with Rare, a US-based group that is working to protect the region’s local fishing livelihoods and help keep the communities out of the poverty spiral that can happen when there’s no more fish, and therefore, no more food.

Rare sponsors fellows in 12 areas in the Philippines. These fellows, who are members of the community, become part of Rare’s two-year program to end destructive and illegal fishing and safeguard the local marine protected area, which is kind of a “fish bank” for the town. In return, the fellows earn a master’s degree from The University of Texas at El Paso.

These marine protected areas (MPAs) are quite small – 100 acres here, 200 acres there – but they make a huge difference to the communities, which include fishers working from paddle dugout and outrigger canoes with basic hook-and-line or net gear. Before Rare’s campaigns got started last fall, many of the MPAs weren’t really guarded closely and illegal fishing within the boundaries, which are usually marked by buoys or bamboo poles, was difficult to stop. But now the Rare Conservation Fellows have been organizing 24/7 enforcement of the MPAs and for the most part, illegal and destructive fishing has been greatly curbed.

“Rare’s projects are called Pride campaigns because they take care to show the towns that they have something special and worth protecting.“

Rare’s projects are called Pride campaigns because they take care to show the towns that they have something special and worth protecting. The MPA guards are all volunteers, with overnight shifts lasting 12 hours or more, and we learned that some of the guards are local fishermen who were once illegally fishing within the MPA before learning the value of protecting it.

In addition to staffing the MPA, the fellows create a mascot for the campaign that’s based on the area’s flagship species, like rabbitfish, lobster or giant clams. These cute anthropomorphized creatures have quickly become the most popular parts of the campaigns. In the little villages of Mindanao, the arrival of the mascots is a major event.

I’ll talk a little more about each Rare Conservation Fellow that I met in upcoming posts, but I first want to thank Rare for letting me tag along on these site visits. It was really an extraordinary experience.

This is part 1 in a series of dispatches from the Philippines.  

• Read Part 2: From Dynamite Fishing to Sustainable Fishing
• Read Part 3: Fish as a Lifeline for Filipinos
• Read Part 4: Securing the Future of Filipino Fishers
• Read Part 5: Exploring a Filipino Fish Market

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