DAN MARIANO Among the natural attractions of the Philippines are its dive sites. Located in the so-called Coral Triangle, our country can lay legitimate claim to being at the centre of the centre of marine biodiversity. For decades the mind blowing variety of underwater fauna and flora has attracted local travellers and foreign visitors, including whale shark (Rhincodon typus) watchers and scuba divers, to our seas and shores. But for how much longer? Notwithstanding official and non-governmental efforts at conservation, the deterioration of our marine environment has not abated. In fact, indications are that the degradation is actually accelerating. Last Friday several of my scuba buddies and I took advantage of the break in the weather by taking a day trip to Mabini, Batangas - popularly, but erroneously, referred to as Anilao - just a couple of hours by car from Manila. Anilao, in fact, is just one of several barangay (villages) in the municipality of Mabini. Arriving at a dive resort in Barangay San Teodoro, we were dismayed to find the shore littered with all sorts of garbage. The flotsam consisted mostly of plastic water bottles, bags, etc. The bulk of the rubbish was made up of discarded sachets of shampoo, soap and detergent. The filth on the beach and an undertow wrote off a surf entry that we had planned on originally. We decided instead to hire a motorised banca to bring us to two dive sites, called Saddle and Batok, several kilometres away. Yet, even there the sea was full of trash and not just on the surface. We entered the water by back-flipping from the boat and even at a depth of 30 feet the garbage invasion was still apparent. Plastic covered swathes of coral growth, sections of which were showing telltale signs of bleaching. These are indeed warning signals of impending doom for corals along with the marine life that depend on them for reproduction, nutrition and survival. One of the boatmen said that the garbage actually comes from Manila Bay but is washed towards Balayan Bay in Batangas province by the waves whipped up by the northeast monsoon winds that prevail in this part of Luzon during the rainy season. True, many factors are responsible for marine environmental degradation from destructive fishing methods to global warming. But from what we have seen of the damage already done to the waters of Batangas, the indiscriminate dumping of solid waste primarily plastic is the number one suspect. And the bulk of plastic garbage comes in the form of sachets. The sale of small amounts of shampoo and detergents in plastic sachets is very popular throughout the Philippines and other developing countries. Plastic sachets were first used to pack shampoo products by a company that failed to file a patent and thus does not own the trade rights to this invention. Not long afterward, sachet packs began to flood the world literally. Dive sites are, of course, not the only places where the environmental damage done by sachets is evident. The same small packs and other disposable plastic products find their way into our streets, storm drains, sewers and flood-control structures. When burned, they fill the air with toxic fumes. As environmental advocates point out, many animals ingest plastic bags, mistaking them for food, and therefore die. Worse, the ingested plastic bag remains intact even after the death and decomposition of the animal. Thus, plastic loiters in the landscape where other victims may ingest it. It takes at least a thousand years for plastic to break down long after the businessmen, industrialists and investors who reaped mega-profits from non-biodegradable products like sachets are themselves dead, buried and decomposed. This is all the more reason that their state of neglect should be immediately addressed, not by cosmetic changes but by real measures that touch on the roots of the problem. Manila Times