Today I was in Manila Bay on board Greenpeace's ship named Esperanza (which is Spanish for "Hope") with members of Greenpeace, the media and scientists of the University of the Philippines Diliman Marine Science Institute. I'm currently working as a research assistant for a project on biodiversity and resilience.
The project aims to help scientists work together with the media to bring vital information and data to the normal everyday person, so that they can know what is happening to the environment and what they can do to help. So basically it's helping relate science based information to the public through various forms of media. And as my previous posts suggest, this is part of my journey.
So as much bad press Manila Bay gets, both locally and internationally, the bay has found a way to cope with what's happening to it. This is evident in the life (fish, squid, plankton, etc) in its waters. The bay is more alive than what people think. But the problem is that the bay's natural ecological levels are imbalanced. So life prevails, only because the bay still has its natural methods of healing itself, but the rate of pollution (run-offs, solid wastes, sewage, etc) that enters the bay and that affects the bay are still high which creates the ecological imbalance and the unsightly visual in the bay.
So I do believe that people, including myself, owe Manila Bay a huge apology. It may not be aesthetically beautiful as it was years before, but it is not the bay's or nature's fault, but the fault of many people who don't see the interconnectivity of life. We really have to start seeing the ridge-to-reef relationships of nature and it's natural bodies of land and water and start doing our part to help nature heal and return to its natural state and beauty. No matter how small our part is, like segregating and making sure we throw our trash in the right place, it will go a long way in the long run and if we can get people to do their part for change.
In the Esperanza I saw this photo of the Dalai Lama with members of Greenpeace. I took it as a sign and a message for myself and my personal journey and advocacy. Change can happen, as long as we do our part and we help awaken others to the cause and need for change. Change for the positive that is.
This is a tarpaulin of the project I am working on, it's not my design or my work but the message is truly inspiring and heart warming. It features a thresher shark and "its" message to a person who is living in the Philippines. It's basically like "what would nature and this animal say if it could talk". It is truly such a heart warming advertisment. I hope when these are posted around the metro, that people will take sometime to read it and start thinking of helping out nature heal.
I couldn't resist taking this photo of this teddy bear on the boat we took to get to the Esperanza. The fisherman who owned the boat that we took said he found the bear floating in the bay so he got it and used it as a decorative piece on his boat. This photo just goes to show that even the most innocent of things can find their way into Manila Bay and become another object and symbol of pollution.
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