Marine Biodiversity

The Philippines Identified as the World's Epicenter of Marine Biodiversity

NORFOLK- The Philippine Islands, located in the Southeast Asian marine bio diversity triangle, has the richest concentration of marine life on the entire planet, according to a study conducted by Kent Carpenter, Old Dominion University associate professor of biological sciences.

A multi disciplinary project headed by Carpenter that lasted more than 10 years and involved 101 of the world's foremost authorities on marine life produced 2,983 maps of marine species for the western Pacific Ocean. The study, conducted for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, produced "the largest and most accurate database available" according to a review by Bruce Collette of the National Marine Fisheries Service Systematic Laboratory at the Smithsonian Institution.

"Scientists have long known that the area in Southeast Asia that includes Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines holds the richest marine biodiversity. I was amazed to discover that the extreme center of this bio diversity is in the Philippines, rather than closer to the equator," said Carpenter. "However, a geographical information system analysis of this extensive database clearly shows this pattern."

The results of these findings will be published in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes under the title, "The Center of the Center of Marine Shore fish Bio diversity: The Philippine Islands." The article is co authored by Victor Springer of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. The computer analysis was done with the support of Conservation International.

Carpenter's goal now is to understand the natural forces, such as lithospheric plate movements, prevailing currents, and the geography and geology of the area that contributed to the evolution of the bio diversity. "This discovery poses some very interesting questions about the origins of marine life in our oceans. Perhaps the Philippines hold the key to unraveling mysteries about how marine bio diversity patterns change through space and time."

Another of Carpenter's goals is to support conservation efforts in the Philippines. Teaming with life on its coral reefs, mangrove swamps, sea grass beds and soft-bottom habitats, the Philippine Islands are the marine counterpart to the Amazon rain forest in terms of concentrated bio diversity, he said. Unfortunately, the Philippines share another sad common characteristic with the Amazon-many of its inhabitants are being threatened with local extinction due to uncontrolled deforestation, soil erosion, air and water pollution, coral reef degradation and destructive fishing techniques.

The study also found that this center of marine biodiversity has a comparatively high number of species that are only found in the Philippines. Therefore, there is the real threat of extinction, including some species that have yet to be discovered by scientists.

"This area is highly threatened and a number of destructive fishing practices, including dynamite fishing, contribute to the decline," said Carpenter. "One of the biggest threats to coral reefs is in runoff from poor land use that results in heightened erosion. This runoff goes into the rivers and out to sea covering the coral in sediments that are detrimental to their survival."

Species Carpenter helped catalogue in the waters off of the Philippine Islands include seaweeds, corals, bivalves, gastropods, cephalopods, stomatopods, shrimps, lobsters, crabs, sea cucumbers, sharks, rays, chimaeras, bony fishes, estuarine crocodiles, sea turtles, sea snakes and marine mammals.

"Bio diversity is of major interest to many people," he said. "The livelihood of many Filipinos depends on the health of their marine ecosystem. There is a big dilemma however, in that the use of this valuable resource is often at odds with its conservation, and without conservation the resource will soon lose its value.Filipinos are trying valiantly to resolve this. However, clearly, much work still needs to done to solve this dilemma."

Based on Carpenter's findings, one of the most important places to focus attention on conservation, is in the waters off of the Philippine Islands.

News Release
Date: Aug. 19, 2004
Contact: Michelle Nery
757-683-3100
mnery@odu.edu

Kung takot pa rin kayo sa mga Internet hoaxes, the results were presented in Manila, Sept. 14 2004 at the Museum of the Filipino People. Also, check these links :

On Prof. Carpenter :
http://web.odu.edu/sci/biology/kent.html

For the scientific article for publication : PDF format
http://www.odu.edu/sci/biology/files/EBFMS3699-04CarpenterSpringerPhilippineCenterPrePressInPress.pdf

Another news piece, below : http://www.dailypress.com/news/columnists/dp-68702cm0aug29,0,1072667.column?coll=dp-news-columnists

Rich Islands

What area of the globe has the most diverse mixture of marine species?

Old Dominion biology professor Kent Carpenter knows the answer.

He led a research project that lasted more than 10 years and involved 101 marine experts who produced nearly 3,000 maps of marine species in the western Pacific Ocean.

Carpenter suspected the center of biodiversity would be in the Pacific Ocean at the equator, because that is where there would have been the least impact from water cooling periods that killed off species during past ice ages. But he found out that the most species-rich portion of the oceans was actually farther north, in the Philippines.

"It's an enigma," he said. "We don't know why. This is one of the reasons I'm writing research proposals to try to understand why this happened."

Carpenter works in the Philippines for about a month every couple of years. Scuba diving in the Philippines is quite different than in the Chesapeake Bay or even the Caribbean.

"In the Philippines you can get in the water in a coral reef and in about 20 minutes you can enumerate 120 species of fish," he said. "If you get in the Chesapeake Bay and spend 20 minutes around one of the pilings under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, you may be able to count 10 species but normally three or four."

You may see an explosion of species while diving in the Caribbean, but the Philippines has four or five times the number of fish. Carpenter said it's unfortunate that erosion, pollution and overfishing are threatening the biological diversity of the Philippines in the same way that clear-cutting is harming the Amazon rain forest.

Carpenter's findings will soon be published in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes, but you can find them more readily at web.odu.edu/sci/ biology/kent.html