Filipino bureaucracy

Getting a drivers license can be a pain in the ass. We thought to make it easy for ourselves in the Netherlands: let's get an international drivers license. Done in 5 minutes. But not good enough for the Filipino ANWB. They want a translation of the embassy with official stamp. The nearest embassy is in Manila, so that's not gonna happen. Solution: you buy a temporary student license for a month and after that you do a theory exam and a practical exam. Nice detail: you only have to do the practical exam if you bring your own car, since do do not have cars of their own. You do have to pay for it though, even if you do not do the test. Sounds easy, just pay and you have your temporary license. But no, that is not how it works. After 5 hours which included 4 hours and 55 minutes of waiting and 4 minutes of walking to 6 different counters we walked out of the office again and we can repeat the whole exercise next month for the real license.

Of course if you now the right person in the office you can also pay thrice the amount of money and you just get your license, no exam, no drugs test, no medical test and hardly any waiting. Apparently we already now two of those persons through different friends...

Ok, you have a drivers license. The next step is a car. MCP has a second hand car since a couple of weeks. We have been driving around happily for 5 days and then the problems started. We have a month guarantee on the car, but unfortunately that does not guarantee that the mechanic will actually fix the problem. We are now in a state of mind that we wouldn't be surprised that the car will fall apart on day 31 (figuratively speaking of course), so we have to pay the mechanic for multiple problems.

Good mechanics are hard to find and even if you have one, the cheap Chinese parts they use to replace the old ones are not really helpful because they tend to malfunction after a couple of months/weeks/days according to your amount of luck. And that is were the real problem lies. Second hand cars come from Korea or Japan and are usually stripped to the bone in the Philippines and rebuild again with the earlier named cheap Chinese parts. From the outside everything looks fine and the first few days actually everything is fine. But a new car costs a fortune and will eventually break down at some point as well and the same song starts all over again. Who do people have cars here in the first place? From my mildly aggressive tone you have probably figured out by now that we some slight issues with our lovely car. Fortunately our motorbike is still working properly. 

I am happy to inform you that I wrote this particular part of the blog 1 week ago and the car is still functioning.

Not everything we do is frustrating though. We had a four day ReefCheck training Mid-December given by the developer of the training. We were incredibly lucky that this training was planned at the place were we are staying now and that we could join in. With a group of 20 participants including students from the Siliman University, different dive shops and Marine Conservation Philippines we followed an interesting program of lectures, diving and snorkeling.

With ReefCheck surveys you measure the abundance of human disturbances by looking at different indicator species of fish and invertebrates. You also look for abundance of coral and damage to coral trough for instance dynamite fishing, anchor damage or typhoons. In each area you want to research, you make two transects of 100m at a shallow depth and a bit deeper. Monitoring takes place as often as possible.

Since this research is simultaneously done in over 90 countries, Reef Check is a good tool to look at human disturbances worldwide. It is a relatively easy method to learn because it focuses only on a limited amount of species, which is also the disadvantage. Ecologically more interested species are left out, in favor of heavily over fished species or edible inverts. You do not very often see a Bumphead parrotfish or Humphead wrasse because they are well liked on the dinner table and grow quite big. Other common fish you find on the reef, like rabbitfish or angelfish are not part of the survey. Still, it can be quite difficult to recognize all the different kind of snappers and to not confuse them with other fish species!

MCP will be using Reef Check for part of the research and so it is useful for us to be qualified as Ecodivers from now on. We can use the Reef Check methodology and upload to data to the worldwide database. Our next step is to become official Reef Check trainers so that we can train our volunteers up to Ecodivers. For now, we will be using the extended documentation material and powerpoints to train our volunteers so they can help with the surveys. We will add some extra species because we are interested not only in human disturbances both also in the actual health of the reef ecosystem.

With the now existing Reef Check group of about 20 people we will be doing surveys in Dauin, Masaplod and Zamboanguita four times a year, starting already in January with a practice survey in Dauin. As MCP we will develop several more transects in Zamboanguita, both in- and outside Marine Protected Areas to see how bad the human disturbance is in our area and whether there are any differences inside and outside MPA's. If we find any human disturbances, we will try to find the cause and see if we can prevent or diminish it by looking for solutions with the local community, municipality and other involved parties.