Illegal Fishermen at Gato Island in Malapascua

I'm back to my regular programming now. Teehee. My goal is to finish blogging about all those travels I did in 2010 so by the time I live in Boracay come summer, I can finally do a near real time travel blogging. I've never done that before. I always wanted to enjoy my travels first then just blog about them much, much later.While this method of blogging has been very enjoyable, it's also been time-consuming for me. Since it's a brand new year, I figured, I can try doing a more real time type of travel blogging starting this summer.

Anyway, moving on, here are snippets of my visit to this not-so-wonderful marine sanctuary that is Gato Island. I'll tell you why...

Seeing Gato island from afar...

Gato Island is supposed to be a marine reserve which is about 1 hour boat ride from Malapascua Island. I went there together with our team of divers (Carelle, RR and Ian) for their Monad shoal dive. They were excited to see white tip sharks! Gato island boasts of a cavern that runs through the island, about 25 meters in length. Since I'm no diver, I thought of just snorkeling instead.

RR ready to dive...

Unfortunately, by the time I hit the water, I couldn't see a single thing. The water was so murky and dark. When I did see a pair of huge lapu-lapu, I thought they were sharks so I panicked and went back up the boat and just sunbathed instead.

That's me catching some sun...

I thought the murky water was the worst of it. By the time my friends came back to the boat, Carelle was cryings coz she saw some dead nemos and dead swordfish (photos below).



As it turned out, the other boat that was parked in a nearby cave, was the boat of illegal fishermen and they seemed to be using cyanide underwater no wonder my diver friends saw a lot of dead fish. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

boat of illegal fishermen

This is just so sad. Carelle thought of telling the local authorities about it but our boatmen said that these illegal fishermen are being protected by Malapascua island's local government itself. Woah. This is probably the reason why Gato island's guard house doesn't have any guards in it. Look!

the empty guard house

We can only do so much. I hope blogging about it will make more people aware and hopefully, concerned citizens can do something about it.


To see all 174 photos I took, please click the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=82730&id=1619903650&l=36d1b94bbe

To read everything I blogged about my Malapascua trip so far, please head to:
Malapascua 2010

***For a complete list, here's an awesome guide on Cebu: Where to Go and What to Do