By Danny O. Calleja
LEGAZPI CITY — From hybernating somewhere else for quite some time, the gentle marine giants are back in Donsol. And so are the tourists.
“We have at least five of them now staying and frequently appearing before public eyes since about two weeks ago,” Alan Amanse, the DonsolButanding Interaction Office (BIO) head, said in a statement reaching here last week.
He was referring to the whale sharks known as the gentle giants of the ocean, which for nearly two decades, have made the coastal water of Donsol, Sorsogon, their seasonal home and attracted tourists from all over the world who sought a once-in-a-lifetime close encounter with these enormous creatures.
With their (whale sharks) reappearance after almost a year of absence, tourists have once again started coming, Amanse said.
This means that this year’s season for whale shark tourism in the municipality has started nearly four months ahead of the regular period that in the past years would come in the months of February through June.
During this period, schools of these marine mammals, locally called butandings, usually arrive from nowhere of the ocean and stay near the mouth of the Donsol River to take advantage of the continuous abundance of plankton that fill their diet, to mate and even breed.
From a sleepy fourth-class municipality, Donsol has been accelerated to first class two years ago owing to the tremendous gains of its tourism sector in just 12 years after the presence of butandings in its waters was officially discovered in 1998.
Barely 16 years ago, Donsol, which sits 47 kilometers southwest of this city or 540 kilometers southeast of Manila, was described as a sleepy rural community where weathered vehicles spurred swirling clouds on dusty, unpaved roads.
Over years following its discovery as seasonal sanctuary of whale sharks, it captured international attention with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)- Philippines spearheading a holistic conservation program, which ranges from satellite butanding tagging and photo-identification, to the effective management of tourism impacts.
Since then, the national government has been pouring in funds to improve the 29-kilometer main road linking the area to the Maharlika Highway and road networks within the municipality to make it more accessible to land trips.
The biggest among these road improvement projects being undertaken by the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) are the ongoing Php769.2-million Donsol-Pioduran and the Php700-million Donsol-Guinobatan roads that will open new convenient and shorter routes between the municipality and the southeastern sections of Albay.
The road connection between Donsol with Pioduran will also allow tourists to move around ecotourism sites along the coastline of Ticao Pass and jump through the Pioduran port to Burias, Masbate, a quaint island that offers unexplored ancient landmarks and pristine beaches away from the hassles of urban life.
The Donsol-Jovellar-Guinobatan road, on the other hand, will make travel shorter between Donsol and areas covered by the third district of Albay where Mt. Mayon’s southwestern quadrant could be closely viewed as well as Ligao City, the site of the alluring Kawa-Kawa Hill and Nature Park.
Whale sharks are species of giant sea mammals, scientifically called Rhincodontypus, and are a slow-moving filter-feeding sharks and the largest extant fish species reaching as big as 13 meters in body length and weight of more than 21 metric tons.
They are migratory in nature but some of them have adopted the Donsol waters as residence.
Friendly to human beings, these creatures swim from surface to mid-water and with their size, they are hard to miss.
This resident group, composed of around eight fully matured butandings, would stay behind and continue entertaining tourists and visitors until September; then disappear from public view and stay not farther than the nearby Manta Bowl to wait for their next season.
The Manta Bowl is a deep portion of Ticao Pass, a sanctuary of manta rays, an equally-protected marine wildlife species.
Study shows that the largest annual congregation of the whale sharks is in Donsol, where they migrate in vast number, to take advantage of the dense food concentration of plankton and krill, which is brought about by the current patterns, water temperature, and the general health of the sea.
For the whole of last year until the early months of this year, however, no whale shark arrived, idling the tourism industry of the municipality that in the past years would be visited by an average of 25,000 tourists yearly.
During the period, the butandings have to stay away from the high temperature of the Donsol waters and lack of food due to intense heat of summer, Amanse said.
The ideal temperature ranges between 26 and 27 degrees centigrade but it significantly rose to 29-30 degrees centigrade while the supply of plankton also declined due to the same factor.
That hurt badly the local tourism industry badly — affecting severely not only the town’s revenue earnings but the livelihood of hundreds of industry workers.
Whale sharks come to Philippine seas essentially to feed on plankton; however, by themselves, our seas are not rich in plankton, being located in an area where upwelling, a process that brings nutrients from the bottom of the sea to the surface and fertilizes the water column which consequently results in rich plankton production, does not occur.
Instead, our marine waters are fertilized by outwelling, which is caused by the monsoon flood and typhoon winds and waves which either transport the nutrients from the coastline to the sea or stir the coastal bottom sediments and fertilize the water column, followed by plankton production.
“In other words, the lack of typhoons in the recent years in the region have rendered our seas quite infertile, decreased the plankton production, and made our seas a poor source of food for the whale sharks,” Amanse said.
The prevailing rainy season and the coming of typhoon “Glenda” last July must have helped in making Donsol waters attractive once more to the butandings and the return of tourists would certainly relive the local tourism industry to its peak during the whole season, Amanse said.