BY: REY ANTHONY H. CHIU
TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, May 9 (PIA)—Ocean Month in May this year highlights the critical roles of the mangroves in protecting communities and supplying food and resources enough to rally people to plant protect and conserve these crucial links in the marine ecosystem.
The Ocean Month adopts Mangroves protect: Protect Mangroves as this year’s theme.
At the kick-off activities last week, Provincial Environment and Natural Resources Officer Nestor Canda said that coastal communities with mangrove cover were spared from lashing waves and howling winds during the onset of typhoon Yolanda.
Making his rounds and ocular inspection all over eastern and northwestern Bohol during the storm, Canda said communities without mangroves had registered more damage, pounding waves threatened houses near the beaches while strong winds toppled and crumpled houses.
Speaking during the opening program attended by members of the Bohol Coastal Resources Management Task Force and students from Bohol’s key fishery schools, Canda added that communities with mangrove covers were protected from the disaster which also ravaged islets north of Bohol.
On the other hand, environment specialists Juliet Paler of the local environment office and Bohol coastal Resource Management Coordinator Adelfa Salutan agreed that beyond the obvious role of mangroves as natural breakwaters stopping or if not, significantly dampening sea surges, mangroves hide a far more important role in balancing marine systems.
At the Kapihan sa PIA recently, Paler said mangroves are not just home to wildlife but to human dwellers who settle within and near mangrove areas for their close proximity to food banks which mangroves provide.
Salutan explained that leaves falling from mangroves and into the water rote and form detritus which feeds millions of fingerlings, newly hatched fish eggs that take their refuge from the predators in the shallows of mangrove forests and tideflats.
Fishes go to the mangroves to spawn, where their eggs are better protected by the shallows, and where food is abundant, the mater temperatures conditioned to be fitting for the hatchlings.
Mangroves have been known to absorb carbon dioxides and other pollutants from the atmosphere and give off oxygen that makes the nearby areas fresh, Paler added. (mbcn/rahc/PIA7-Bohol)