Coastal Resource Management
Working with local government
In the Philippines, the coast is managed town by town. Since the Local Government Code of 1991, each municipality has had authority over its own waters, out to 15 kilometres from the shore.
The municipality decides how its waters are fished, declares Marine Protected Areas by local ordinance and enforces the rules through its Bantay Dagat, the municipal sea wardens. Day to day, coastal resource management usually falls to the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office, the MENRO. This is often a small team that also handles solid waste management and much else, with few people trained in marine science and no dive team of its own.
Local autonomy puts decisions in the hands of people who know the coast and live with the results. It also leaves a marked capacity gap between what a municipality is responsible for and what it can actually see and do underwater.
That gap is where we come in. Since 2015 we have given local governments what they need to manage their reefs: reliable data, trained divers and practical help on the water. It started along our own coastline in Zamboanguita, Siaton and Santa Catalina. Since 2024, through the BATASS and BATMAN municipal alliances, it reaches nine more municipalities.
What we do
How we support local government
Our work with municipalities rests on four things.
Reef data for decision-makers
Our survey teams carry out about 2,000 reef surveys a year, inside and outside the MPAs. Municipalities get the results as reports with management recommendations, and all our data is open to anyone.
Zamboanguita MPA report, 2017 to 2022 (PDF, 10 MB)Open access survey data
Training government teams
We have trained more than 120 government divers, including dive teams from the BATASS and BATMAN municipalities. Training goes beyond diving to survey methods, data handling and writing up results, so municipalities can monitor their own reefs and mark out their MPAs.
How we monitor reefs
Protected areas and Bantay Dagat
We support the MPAs and the Bantay Dagat who guard them with funds, equipment, manpower and training, from guardhouses to flashlights for night patrols.
See our achievements
Cleaner coasts
In Zamboanguita, Siaton, Santa Catalina, Dauin and Dumaguete City, our full-time clean-up team of 15 clears beaches, river mouths and mangroves every day of the week. Since 2020 it has collected more than 420 tonnes of marine litter, and we work with barangays and municipalities to improve solid waste management.
Our ocean plastics workWe have also planted more than 31,000 mangroves in five municipalities. Read about our mangrove work.
Boundaries: NAMRIA and PSA, via OCHA and geoBoundaries (CC BY 3.0 IGO).
Where we work
Fourteen municipalities
Our reef monitoring covers the coasts of Zamboanguita, Siaton and Santa Catalina. Since 2024 we have also been the technical support partner for marine conservation of two municipal alliances, BATASS and BATMAN, and we work in or with every MPA in all 12 municipalities.
Our survey area
BATASS alliance
BATMAN alliance
Coastal clean-ups only
Here our support is limited to weekly coastal clean-ups.
Results
When data leads to action
Data is only useful if someone acts on it. Three examples from our coast:
Poaching inside an MPA
Our survey data pointed to poaching inside one of Zamboanguita's MPAs. The municipality investigated and stepped up enforcement.
Crown-of-thorns outbreaks
Crown-of-thorns starfish feed on coral, and in an outbreak they can kill much of a reef. Several outbreaks picked up in our surveys have led to removal efforts.
New protected areas
Our long-term data has helped make the case for protecting reefs that were open to fishing. When Zamboanguita was establishing new MPAs in 2022, the BFAR-USAID Fish Right programme surveyed them together with us and the municipality, using our survey method.
Read the 2022 survey report (PDF)Partners
Our government partners
We work with ENRD Negros Oriental, DENR and the local governments of all 12 municipalities.
