Death of a whale shark

NAAWAN, MISAMIS ORIENTAL -- The Friday the villagers brought Mapu to its, literally, watery grave at 300 fathoms, it rained an odd long rain in Barangay Maputi, Naawan, a coastal town about 60 kilometers west of Cagayan de Oro City among the Iligan Bay.

Mapu, a female shark, had a funeral cortege of mostly women who braved the drizzle and stood by the shore, carrying umbrellas. Their talk was endless and had no hint of mourning. Some of them were talking of another death: Leo Echegaray, the country’s first death convict after 22 yeARs, was to be executed at 3 p.m.

There were but among them, those few men and boys who, as in the past weekdays since Mapu came into a fish pen in Nawaan, Misamis Oriental, must have found perfect excuse not to come to class at the barangay grade school. Five men were tasked to tow the carcass towards the sea.

Mapu was the totuki (local name for whale shark) which came into a fish pen at a depth of five fathoms at 6:30 p.m., Feb. 2. It died the next day by the shore, probably from multiple wounds in the head and a huge cut in the first dorsal fin, speculated Silverio Bama, head of the law enforcement unit of the provincial fisheries office.

Mapu is short for the village’s name, Maputi (pop. 3,600). “The name just caught on,” said the child. “We often do that here. One time we caught a giant turtle and we painted the name of the village on its back before we released it,” another woman chimed in.

38 hours
It took 38 hours to dispose of the dead whale shark. The delay was all because the local government units (LGUs) and government agencies took too long to decide what to do, how to do it and which agency is in charge.

The dead totuki, weighing about two tons, 9.5 meters long and already beginning to decompose, was towed by a small fishing boat to the sea at 1 p.m. in a steady downpour on Feb.5.

Sources in the village said it died Wednesday evening, 24 hours after it allegedly got into the fish pen, wounded 17 times by the fish pen workers with a harpoon and bolo, and towed to the beach by two strands of nylon rope by morning.

However, the fish men owner has denied the allegations, saying the fish was already wounded and weak when it entered his pen.

According to Fisheries Administrative Order (FAO) No. 193, dated March 25, 1998, the Regional Fisheries Unit is responsible for the disposal as any whale shark’s carcass. The same order bans the wounding, catching, selling, butchering and exporting of the whale shark, as well as its cousin, the manta ray.
Offenders are fined from 500 to 5,000. or imprisonment of five months to four years, or both.

The Philippines is one of the 19 countries identified by Traffic, a monitoring program of the World-wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN), to have annual shark catch of at least 100,000 tons.

The UN’s Food And Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) estimates that total world landings of sharks grew from 272,000 tons in 1950 to a record of 760,000 tons in 1976.
The Philippines, like Brazil, Israel and South Africa, is among the developing countries with shark fishing restrictions like the FAO 193.
Bury or burn
Earlier, David Ernacio, chief at Bureau of Fisheries regional office in Cagayan de Oro City, told the provincial agriculture and environment office field workers to instruct the LGU’s to bury or burn the whale shark.

He turned down requests to allow the slaughter of the 9.5 meter long elasmobranch, scientifically name Rhincodon typus. It is one of the five families of sharks identified as highly migratory by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

Whale shark hunting was a 40-year-old tradition, at the least, among a group of fishers in Talisayan town, also in Misamis Oriental, along Gingoog Bay until the ban was impose last year.

The huge creatures had also been sighted and hunted off Camiguin Island.
The presence of the whale sharks this month in Naawan would add Iligan Bay among the list of waters on the whale shark’s migration path.

‘Very graceful’
While Mapu did not get away, at least two of her companions did. All three trapped in the fish pen were females since they did not have claspers. A 15-meter whale shark was trapped in a fish pen at dawn on Feb. 4 and was released unharmed by noon.

A team of four marine biology professors, three scuba divers from Iligan City and about 10 fishers aided the huge fish out of the fish pen Thursday noon, amid an audience of about 100 boat-riding spectators.

It took only about 35 minutes to guide the fish out, said Naawan Mayor Erlinda Niere, who supervised the rescue operations. She also informed other government agencies about the whale sharks.

The team dived at 11:45 a.m., took underwater photographs and video, and guided the fish so it would turn toward the pen’s entrance. The fish glided back to the open seas at 12:15, Niere recalled.

“I would say it was very graceful,” said marine biologists Prof. Renoir Abeira of the Mindanao State University School of Marine Fisheries.

“It never showed signs of agitation. I was swimming there in front of it trying to orient it to turn toward the pen’s opening, and its mouth was so huge, it could swallow me whole and still have room for another. If we are to assign a human feeling to it, I would say it looked shy,” he added.

‘Traumatized’
But members of Mindanao Marine Wildlife Watch (MMWW), who witnessed the release, felt that the fish was probably “traumatized” by the experience of having been touched by so many hands and disturbed by the loud shouts of the avid spectators.

“We are aware that even those who are allowed to get near this fish must maintain at least 3-4 meters distance from them,” said Marilyn Baldo, a tourism worker coordinating a whale shark watching project in Talisayan town and member of the MMWW. But the villagers ignored repeated pleas to release the shark earlier.

Eduardo Gaid, 59, fish pen owner, was almost inconsolable, mourning more the damage to his fish pen than the death of the whale shark towed toward the beach or about the possibility of facing prosecution for not releasing the creatures at once the night it got caught.

He thought that like any fish that comes into his pen, the whale shark was also his to dispose of. “What am I going to do with my fish pen now? It is damaged. I cannot earn a living and yet I can’t have anything of the fish,” he said.

“Who will help me repair the damage done to the fish pen? I thought all the while that any fish that gets into it should be ours. Now, we can’t even get a piece of that fish.”

He cannot understand why it is prohibited to make us of its meat when it is already dead. He damage to his pen cost P6,000 to P8,000.

Blinking
“The one that went inside my pen was much bigger, it tried to ram into the net and tore it. But I dived down and guided it out. Its huge eyes looked directly at me, blinking several times,” he said.

It appeared that the huge fish were attracted by the light from the petron lamps. “I turned off the light to make them out. I could still see them roaming in the waters.”

As early as the first hours of Feb. 3, fixers began to put a bid on Mapu’s seven fins. Some of the speculators, the fishers said, were willing to give earnest money.

About 40 fishers brought the huge fish out of the pen and towed it close to shore by trying two ropes around its caudal fin and belly.

The ropes were tied to a talisay tree on the shore. Children of various ages took a ride on its back, which was big enough to carry at most 15 kids.

Enterprising boatmen charged P5 per person for a trip closer to the knee-deep waters where the shark was beached. Hundreds of sightseers, some coming all the way from nearby towns, Iligan and Cagayan de Oro, streamed into Barangay Maputi’s beach to take a look at the world's biggest fish.

“I have touched the inside of its mouth. There were hundreds marbles inside it,” remarked Jorge Ty, 12, one of the kids who spent the whole afternoon of Thursday swimming close to the dead fish.

“It moaned like a cow all night,” said a fisher. “And that night, the other whale sharks were trying to get near. They went wild,” said another. “They swam from one end of the shore to another,” he said to the other.

The fish was already on its death throes when government officials from Cagayan de Oro, including tourism regional director Dorothy Joy Pabayo, arrived in the afternoon of Feb. 3 and asked the villagers to release the wounded fish.

There were conflicting reports about its wounds. On Feb. 3, fishers reported that the fish pen owner and the other fishers inflicted the wounds the night the fish entered the corral. Gaid and his son-in-law, however, denied the allegations.

The shark had at least 17 wounds, three of which were round, apparently caused by a spear or harpoon, on its flat head and a one-foot hack wound on its first dorsal fin.
It was the first time in this decade that a whale shark was landed in Naawan, but Gaid said he knew that they have plied these waters since he was young.

Walk for Whale Shark
The Naawan whale shark sightings came barely half a month after the Regional Ecotourism Council launched the Walk for the Whale Shark on Jan. 16 in Cagayan de Oro.

It was aimed to raise funds for a whale shark museum, an alternative livelihood program for traditional whale shark hunters now turned spotters and guides in Talisayan town, about 100 kilometers east of the city.

For two days, Niere withstood strong pressure from fishers to slaughter the fish for themselves and sell the fins to unnamed buyers.

“If we are made to decide, I would agree to the request of the fishers to have it slaughtered so the fishers can partake of it. Slaughtering it for the hungry village folks is much more practical for me than having it preserved in a museum too far away from here.”

She waited until she got the final go-signal from the provincial government and fishers bureau to dispose of the fish Friday morning. But instead of buying it on land, she agreed with the fishers’ suggestion to throw it back to deep waters anchored by big rocks.

Specimen
An unnamed nongovernment organization affiliated with the Department of Tourism earlier expressed its desire to preserve the fish and have it as a specimen at the soon-to-be constructed whale shark natural museum in Talisayan.

But the cost of preservation is too prohibitive and the department does not have funds for cold storage and transport.

Back at the beach, one of the women looked at her watch and noted that it was about 2:30 p.m.

As the spectacle of the whale shark was over, the women hurried back home as it was time for another vicarious experience before their television sets: witnessing death by lethal injection.

That Friday, Leo Echegaray’s dying, said a TV anchorwoman, took 19 minutes flat.
Mapu’s dying took 24 hours, 17 wounds mapping man’s stark brutality on the head of a gentle giant that the Japanese fishers call “ebizusame”, meaning, "lucky charm".