1	Philippines, seek, lifting, ban, tuna, fishing

Philippine President Benigno Aquino III on Friday said the country will ask the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) to lift the two-year ban on tuna fishing in two identified pockets of international waters.

In a message delivered by former Senator Mar Roxas, Aquino said the Philippines will push for the opening portions of the high seas to Philippine tuna catchers or give the country “preferential treatment.”    

The ban, which took effect January this year, prohibits the use of fish aggregating devices in catching yellowfin tuna and other tuna-like fish species.

It covers more than 306,000 square miles of open seas south of Micronesia and north of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea where over 38 Philippine-flag purse seine fishing ships are operating.

Member countries violating the ban will be de-listed from the WCPFC.

The ban however exempts handline tuna catching, a traditional Filipino fishing method.

Fishing inside the 200-mile exclusive economic zone of member countries of the WCPFC is also allowed provided a vessel monitoring system is observed and observers from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) are allowed on board.

The ban has already directly affected close to 1,500 workers employed by fishing companies who were laid off following compliance to the WCPFC circular.  

BFAR director Malcolm Sarmiento said they will submit the Philippine position during the meeting of the WCPFC in December in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Sarmiento said the ban is impractical.

“The measure is not achieving it purpose,” as Sarmiento reasoned out that banning tuna fishing in areas of the species’ migratory path will not solve the rapid depletion of tuna stocks.

He said the practical way of conserving tuna stock is to limit the capacity of catch by each member countries of the WCPFC.

“We will seek for a thorough review of the ban. (And we believe the) logic of the measure will be put to test,” the fisheries chief said.

		1	Coast, Guard, boards, fishing, vessel, off, Palau

Philippine authorities today confirmed receiving reports that two fishing vessels from the country were boarded by the United States Coast Guard in the international waters north of the Republic of Palau and were found to have no international fishing license.

Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (Bfar) assistant director Benjamin Tabios on Friday said they received an e-mail from the US Coast Guard about the incident which could affect the tuna industry in the Philippines.

A two-year ban on tuna fishing in international waters was put into effect starting January this year by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) due to rapidly declining tuna stock.  

A three-month ban on tuna fishing using fish aggregating devices is also in effect every year from July to September. 

Member countries of the WCPFC, however, are allowed to fish within its 200-mile exclusive economic zone provided fishing vessels using this method must have observers on board and must subscribe to the vessel monitoring system (VMS) and equipped with proper licenses.  

The Philippines is a member country of the WCPFC.

Tabios said the two fishing vessels, a purse seiner and a carrier, were accosted outside the pocket of high seas within the Western and Central Pacific where the two-year ban is in effect.

Still, the government will look into the report, according to the fisheries official.

Tabios said they already sent notice of the hearing to the owners and operators of the Filipino fishing vessels, reportedly based in Mati, Davao Oriental.

He said they would file appropriate administrative charges against the owners and operators of the fishing vessel if found guilty of violating Philippine fishing laws.

Tabios declined to give the name of the fishing boats as well as their owners.

“We are still conducting investigation and we have yet to receive a reply from the boat owners,” Tabios said.

The incident was disclosed before the media during the 12th National Tuna Congress in General Santos city.

Ironically, President Benigno Aquino III, in his keynote address delivered by former Senator Mar Roxas, warned fishermen against violating international agreements and Philippine fishing laws.

		1	Aquino, keynote, Philippine, Tuna, Congress

Organizers of the 12^th National Tuna Congress said President Benigno Aquino III will keynote this year’s annual gathering.

The president is expected to address growing concerns over the effects of the two-year ban on fish aggregating device (FAD) fishing in international waters which has already dislocated some 1,496 workers, according to the Department of Labor and Employment.

Industry players are also expected to lobby for the creation of the Department of Fisheries to help sustain the multi-million dollar tuna industry.

“Right now, we’re really facing a difficult situation because of the fishing ban. About 30 percent of the industry’s operations were already affected so far and might even get worse if this concern will not be resolved the soonest time,” Marfenio Tan was quoted during a press conference.

The 12th National Tuna Congress is slated for September 2-3 at the Family Country Homes and Convention Center.

The city has been hosting the annual tuna congress since its inception.

However Tan said they have yet to receive confirmation from Malacañang of the president’s arrival.

Tuna exports have become a traditional export commodity of the country earning more than US$230 million in dollar revenues.

The Philippines is among the world’s top five tuna exporting countries.

Six of the country’s tuna canneries are located in General Santos, earning for the city the moniker as the country’s Tuna Capital.

More than 120,000 of the city’s 700,000 residents are directly and indirectly dependent on the tuna industry.

Recent world restrictions on tuna catching however is threatening the industry.

From July to September each year, said to be the spawning months of tuna, the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) had imposed a ban on tuna fishing.

Beginning this year however, WCPFC expanded the ban to include the closure of international waters in the South Pacific seas to FAD fishing.

The Philippines is a party to WCPFC and has committed to comply with the ban.

		1	Fugitive, cop, Ampatuan, massacre, arrested

Police authorities in Sarangani arrested a police officer who is among the policemen and militiamen being hunted by Philippine police authorities in connection with the massacre of 57 people, including 32 journalists last year.

Sarangani police director Senior Supt. Florendo Quidilla said PO1 Arnulfo Soriano was intercepted at a police checkpoint in Kiamba Thursday morning.

Soriano was tracked down by a police team led by Chief Inspector Henrietto Villamor, according to Quidilla.

The arrested police officer was seized on the basis of a warrant of arrest issued by Quezon City Judge Jocelyn Solis-Reyes who is now hearing the multiple murder charges against at least 192 people, among them several members of a powerful political clan in Maguindanao.

On November 23, relatives and supporters of then Buluan Vice Mayor Esmael Mangudadatu were held at a checkpoint in the Ampatuan town in Maguindanao.

They were later brought to a secluded place where they were gunned down along with journalists who joined the convoy headed to the town capitol where the victims were supposed to file the certificate of candidacy of Mangudadatu.

Witnesses, including those who participated in the murders later identified Andal Ampatuan Jr., then mayor of nearby Datu Unsay town, as among those who led the massacre.

Subsequent police investigations later included the father and namesake of Ampatuan, Andal Sr, three of his brothers and scores of policemen and government militiamen in the charge sheet.

Mangudadatu, who ran and won in May 2008, is now the governor of Maguindanao.

Several other police officers and militiamen remain at large although members of the Ampatuan clan, including Andal Jr, are now in police custody.

Only Andal Jr, however has been indicted while the rest are still appealing their case.

On Wednesday, the first trial hearing of Andal Jr was postponed due to the motion of his lawyers.

		1	Miangas, island, Indonesia, philippines, territorial dispute

The Philippines’ strategic and unique archipelagic location in Southeast Asia may have spared the country border wars that faced many of its neighbors in the region but it also gave this former Spanish and, later, American colony plenty of tense diplomatic rows over her territorial claims with the rest of its neighboring countries in Asia.

On the western side lies the vast chain of islands which China, Vietnam, Malaysia and Taiwan are claiming as part of their territories.

The Philippines is claiming ownership over the Kalayaan group of islands and several atolls, known also as the Spratly group of islands, west of Palawan.

Down south, the Philippines has not yet abandoned its claim over Sabah which is now part of Malaysia.

Historical records have pointed that Sabah was once part of the territory of the Sultanate Sulu leased to the British Empire which in turn ceded it to Malaysia after granting independence to the later.

The Philippines has another little known claim over a tiny island, 3.17 square kilometers to be exact, in the south with a population of 750 residents.

The island, which is just 77 kilometers away from the farthest point in Davao Oriental, is called Miangas Island and is also know in the international maps as Palmas Island.

When the Philippine drew its tourism map in 2009, Miangas was included in its claim.

The new Philippine tourism map immediately drew reaction from the Indonesian government.

Indonesian Marine and Fisheries Minister Freddy Numberi said Miangas Island in North Sulawesi belongs to Indonesia and had already been registered with the United Nations as one of the country's outermost islands.

Early Philippine maps drawn by the Spanish colonizers are said to include the disputed island and was also included in the Philippine colony that Spain sold (ceded) to the United States for US$20,000,000 under the Treaty of Paris.

The Netherlands, former colonizer of Indonesia, however, also claimed Miangas as part of its then territory in Southeast Asia.

In 1925, both the US and the Netherlands submitted the case for arbitration in which The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in favor of the Dutch government.

Indonesian Consul General in Davao Lalu Malik Patarwana warned that “if Miangas and Marore islands are annexed by the Philippines it will pose a threat to the integrity of the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia.”

Marore Island, from where most of the Indonesian nationals now assimilated into different villages in Sarangani as well as Davao del Sur, is an even smaller island and closer to Mindanao than Miangas.

In 2008, Mindanao Economic Development Council chair Virgilio Leyretana cautioned local journalists in General Santos City from tackling the issue as it has far-ranging economic and security implications for Mindanao and the country as well.

In 2007, Indonesian journalist Andreas Harsono even listed the Miangas Island as the one Mindanao area he had gone to during a workshop of Southeast Asian journalists held in Davao’s Eden Nature Park (http://asiancorrespondent.com/edwin-espejo/archives/7).

Harsono said the Indonesian government was then planning to build an airstrip in Miangas Island.

This was confirmed North Sulawesi governor S. M. Sarundajang during my brief visit in November 2008.

That airstrip is now in existence and the Indonesian government has already established a shipping route to the island.

The Indonesian and Philippine governments have established a joint border patrol base in Miangas, with the Philippines stationing a contingent of Philippine Marines and coast guard authorities.

In 2008, when then Philippine Senator Benigno Aquino III was commencement speaker of the Mindanao State University, this author brought to his attention the plans of the Indonesian government to build an airstrip on Miangas Island as possible diplomatic flashpoint between the country and Indonesia.

Aquino, now president of the Philippines, was then unaware of the Indonesian plan and was more concerned over the Spratly Islands.

Miangas, along with Marore Island, has strategic economic value to the Philippines as it is located inside the 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of the country. 

At 77 kilometers away from Mati, Davao Oriental, it is closer to the Philippines than Indonesia, while the nearest island from Miangas is 232 kilometers (from the Nanusa Island of North Sulawesi).

Trade and commerce in Miangas is also dependent on Mindanao with residents in the island having more affinity with its Mindanao neighbors. In July 2005, people in the island flew the Philippine flag to protest "the behavior of local police" and the little attention they were reportedly getting from the Indonesian government (http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-134350513.html).

Miangas is also in the middle of the migratory path of tuna, a vital economic activity in Southern Mindanao.

It is along this migratory path that hundreds of Filipino fishermen were apprehended for “encroaching and illegally fishing in Indonesian waters.”

This overlapping EEZ has been a serious concern among Filipino tuna producers over the past decade.

The Miangas Island row could as well become a diplomatic flashpoint between Indonesia and the Philippines in the future.

		1	Pacquiao, Watch:, Quest, for, 8th, title, hallow

I would rather that Filipino lawmaker Manny Pacquiao’s November 13 fight against Mexico’s Antonio Margarito be treated as an ordinary, although intriguing, event.  Not the one hyped as a world title fight even if the World Boxing Council (WBC) is sanctioning it as a super welterweight championship bout.

Although the WBC is among the oldest sanctioning bodies in boxing, its legitimacy has suffered tremendously over the last decade.  Winning one nowadays is like picking fallen ripe durian fruit on the ground.

The Pacquiao-Margarito encounter will be sham championship fight by any standard.

It will not add luster to Pacquiao’s incredible march to boxing stardom and impeccable ring record.

For one, Manny has never fought above the 147-lb limit.  It would be foolhardy to crown him king of the super welterweight once he beats Margarito, whose own ring record is ‘boosted’ by a lone, I repeat lone, fight as a super welterweight.

The fact that they are fighting for a ‘vacant title’ also smacks of crass commercialism and plain opportunism on the part of WBC.

Second, the fact Margarito is coming off from a suspension from boxing in the US after he was caught with illegitimate substance on his hand wraps during his fight with Shane Mosley hardly makes him a credible contender in the super welterweight division.

True, the said weight class is devoid with marquee fighters other than Miguel Angel Cotto who was already beaten by Pacquiao.

Paul Williams is considered the man to beat in said weight class.  But Pacquiao’s boxing team sees him to tall at 6’1” for the Filipino who stands a mere 5’6”.

I will not fault Top Rank’s Bob Arum for wanting to see his prized ward fight another one of his “club fighters.”

There is simply too much at stake next year for Pacquiao to take a risk in fighting Williams, besides the obvious mismatch.

But Margarito, after his pathetic knockout loss to Shane Mosley in 2008, is no longer the feared boxer he was once.

Pacquiao has more than even chances of beating, if not knocking out, the Mexican former welterweight champion.

By failing to secure a license from the California State Athletic Commission, margairot's credibility as a boxer and as an opponent to Pacquiao falls short from fan expectations.

Like I anticipated and predicted, Manny is now being ridiculed for taking Margarito given the Mexican’s reputation, not as a hard hitting puncher but as a sportsman lacking in character.

I will not take it against Manny for agreeing to fight Margarito.  He has his own reasons.

But Pacquiao fanatics should not jump like chimpanzees if and when he beat the daylights out of Margarito.  Nor should they trumpet that victory as another feather on his cap as an all time boxing great.

Manny may well earn his eight world title on November 13 but that will ring hollow. 

The greatest fight there is to win is against Floyd Mayweather Jr.  If only the American loudmouth cast away his imagined fears against the Filipino southpaw.