**** 5International Herald Tribune | ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT | Fr i d ay , Nove m b e r 28, 2008

G etting there isn’t easy. To reachTubbataha Reefs, visitors usuallytake a one-hour flight from Manila to

Puerto Princesa City in Palawan, then a boat.These are usually piloted by dive-tour oper-ators, and many leave Puerto Princesa latein the day and only haul in to Tubbataha thefollowing morning. Although monsoonschurn up rough seas from July to Octoberand from November to March, limiting thediving season to March through June, theWorld Heritage site that Filipinos call ‘‘thejewel of Palawan’’ remains a magnet fortourists, divers and marine scientists.

Tubbataha Reefs serve as a breedingground for many species, offering occa-sions to observe hundreds of coral and fish,dolphins, whales and even nesting seaturtles. The Palawan Council for SustainableDevelopment says, ‘‘Tubbataha’s trade-mark among the world’s divers is its coralwalls with extensive colonies of fish.’’

Ron Van Oers, a Unesco program spe-cialist in the Special Projects Unit and a keendiver, visited Tubbataha Reefs in April. Henotes that in marine protected areas, coralsare usually healthy, which is not always thecase for fish. But Tubbataha Reefs, hepoints out, is different. ‘‘I was absolutelystunned by the enormous abundance anddiversity — really in the thousands,’’ he

says. ‘‘Go underwater and let yourself driftfor 45 minutes. You’ll be surrounded bythousands of individual species of fish. I sawa family of 50 humphead wrasse grazingclose to the reef. They didn’t move at all, andI could watch them for several minutes. I’vebeen diving almost everywhere, but havenever seen a family of 50 humpheadwrasse this big. It was amazing. This is a trueWorld Heritage experience. And that is quiterare nowadays.’’

Recent initiatives, taken by park man-agement in the Philippines, as well as by thelocal chapter of the World Wildlife Fund,seek to attract nondivers to TubbatahaReefs. Unesco, in cooperation with local andnational authorities, is trying to create op-portunities for visitors to spend more timein, and attention on, regions surroundingWorld Heritage sites. Now on offer at Tubba-taha Reefs from March through May areWorld Heritage Expeditions. These start inPalawan, visiting the Puerto Princesa Sub-terranean River National Park — a WorldHeritage site — and Tubbataha Reefs; theymove on to the Visayas to visit the church ofMiagao in Iloilo, one of the country’s fourSpanish-era Baroque churches on the WorldHeritage List. These expeditions offersnorkeling tours and sailing trips in Tubba-taha Reefs to nondivers, sharing with this

new public the marvels of what was the ex-clusive playground of divers.

The initiative opens other parts of the na-tion to people who ordinarily come only toTubbataha to dive. Says Van Oers: ‘‘It offersthe wonders of Palawan, which has cavesand forests, and the Visayas, where visitorscan experience local cultures. We’re trying toget people to not only fly in, spend five daysdiving at Tubbataha, then fly out. We wantthem to make a two- or three-week trip tothe Philippines. The central part can beTubbataha for diving, but we’d like them tospend time in outlying regions to experiencethe wonders of the country. We’re hoping togenerate extra benefits and revenue for thecommunities surrounding Tubbataha.’’ �

Unesco World Heritage sites, nomatter where they are located,belong to all people of the world, forall time. Cultural and naturalheritage sites are irreplaceablesources of biological life andinspiration. They are what we livewith today, and what we will passon to future generations. The globalcommunity comes together throughWorld Heritage. With its ongoingtechnical support, fund-raising, sitemonitoring and training workshops,the Unesco program showcasesprecise needs at specific sites,highlighting action to be takenthere, then repeated elsewhere. Asan engagement and partnership,World Heritage shows what nationscan and should do worldwide.Visit http://whc.unesco.org

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SPOTLIGHT | From hawksbill turtles to coral sand caves

The Philippines’s Tubbataha Reef Marine Park: A pristine coral reef in the Sulu Sea

From the 1950s to the present, a history of Jaeger-LeCoultre diving watches

EXPLORING | The jewel of Palawan

Hard to reach, and worth the effort

The World Heritage program

Close encounters: A manta ray in Tubbataha.

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Tubbataha Reef Marine Park,a Unesco World Heritage site in thePhilippines, offers a stunning diversityof marine life, but its vastnessand isolation make it difficult to monitor

G eography has made the Philip-pines’s Tubbataha Reefs unique.They lie in the middle of the Sulu

Sea, a vast area whose remoteness hashelped keep the reefs unspoiled. Unesco’sWorld Heritage Centre calls the TubbatahaReef Marine Park ‘‘an excellent example of apristine coral reef with lagoons and two cor-al islands.’’

One reason for its protection as a WorldHeritage site is its location in what is knownas the Coral Triangle. Explains Unesco Pro-gram Specialist Ron Van Oers, ‘‘This area isrecognized as the birthplace of coral spe-cies and the world center for hard coral di-versity.’’ From there, notes Van Oers, coralshave migrated into the rest of the world’stropical areas. A huge diversity, especially inhard corals, can be found here, and Tubba-taha is at the very heart of it. The diversity,Van Oers adds, extends to marine and otheranimals, too. ‘‘There’s a huge range of fish,and at the surface one sees lots of coralsand caves housing thousands of seabirds.’’ Tubbataha also harbors importanthabitats for threatened sea species — inparticular, hawksbill turtles and greenturtles. All this makes Tubbataha Reefs awide, open-air laboratory where scientistscan study the biological and ecological pro-cesses of the area’s reef systems.

The vast remoteness that makes Tubba-taha special is also a challenge because it

means that monitoring human activitieswithin the 33,200-hectare (82,000 acres)Tubbataha Reef Marine Park is a more diffi-cult task. The Philippine Navy, Coast Guardand representatives from a local communitypatrol the area, and the year-round pres-ence of park rangers since 1997 has helpedfight problems like illegal fishing. Thoughrangers are equipped withpatrol boats, radar andGPS equipment, poachingremains rampant. Eachyear, a number of local orforeign fishermen are ap-prehended. As recently asOct. 23, the Philippine News Agency report-ed that park rangers caught 45 fishermengathering a threatened marine species in-side the no-take reserve; the rangers confis-cated 132 sacks of the top shell Trochusniloticus, locally known as samong, worthone million Philippine pesos ($20,000).

Taking samong or any other endangeredspecies is punishable by 12 to 20 years inprison and/or a 120,000 peso fine, butpoachers risk it, according to the Philippinedaily Business Mirror, because dealers buytop shells for about 150 pesos a kilo, re-selling them at 400 pesos a kilo.

The poaching problem is not new.Though its inaccessibility and isolation onceshielded Tubbataha from overexploitation,by the 1980s, fishermen from other parts of

the Philippines had begun casting their netshere; the decline of fisheries elsewhere inthe nation forced them to seek new revenuesources. At the same time, motorized ves-sels began replacing traditional paddle craftor sailboats, then larger ships from Chinastarted showing up, taking home largecatches. Anglers even resorted to destruc-

tive fishing methods, in-cluding the use of dynam-ite and poisons. As atother World Heritagesites, combating thismenace is often a matterof building local aware-

ness in the neighboring communities, whoneed the park and make use of it.

Successful conservation efforts oftenrely on partnerships to build, and then ex-tend, the communities concerned. Thesecan include agreements with government in-stitutes and nonprofit organizations. But theprivate sector is also joining up to see how itcan help Tubbataha park management fightthreats to the site’s conservation.

After a site is inscribed as World Herit-age, Unesco stays involved by bringingstakeholders together to discuss currentchallenges in that site’s preservation andmanagement. Notes Van Oers, ‘‘At UnescoParis, we get requests from private-sectorcompanies who want to help conservationof World Heritage. Our role is to seek a part-

ner at the demanding end who has reques-ted financial or technical support. We’re aclearinghouse for connecting partners,matching the demand and the offer.’’

Such a matchup was made in a projectbetween the World Heritage Centre and theTubbataha park management, in which theShell Foundation, an independent charity inLondon, provided training for site managersin the basic business-planning skills of run-ning a protected area. Says Van Oers: ‘‘Shellwanted to do something with World Herit-age, and this pilot project was set up. We’retrying to look beyond just protecting the parkbecause of its biodiversity, to see how it cangenerate benefits that can be used for man-agement.’’ In his preface to ‘‘Business Plan-ning for Natural World Heritage Sites — AToolkit,’’ prepared by Unesco and ShellFoundation, Chris West, the foundation’sdeputy director, describes the project as

mutual experience-sharing: ‘‘In addition tothe specific business-planning supportprovided to managers of World Heritagesites, business managers from Shell Foun-dation and Shell — with little previousknowledge or experience of conservation —gained valuable insights about the manage-ment of areas of rich biological diversity.’’

Tubbataha’s World Heritage listing opensother doors to private companies. Petron, aPhilippine oil company, is financing the long-overdue embedment mooring system and afive-year community development project;the latter includes summer fellowships forstudents to engage with local communities— working, for example, in seaweed farm-ing. The island municipality of Cagayancillo,which has political jurisdiction over Tubba-taha, relies heavily on seaweed farming andforwent fishing rights to Tubbataha when itwas declared a marine reserve. �

The remoteness of thisvast area helps keepthe reefs unspoiled

The Swiss luxury watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre registered its first patent ina watch’s resistance to water in1911. The manufacture becameinvolved in diving watches in the1950s. In 1959, it developed theMemovox Deep Sea, the first divingwatch with an alarm, reminding thediver that it was time to resurface.

Since then, Jaeger-LeCoultre hasbeen steadily advancing underwaterwatchmaking technology. From 1959to 1970, it created several models fordivers that had names like Barracuda,Shark or Dolphin. In 1965 came theMemovox Polaris, still the mostpopular of the antique line of Jaeger-

LeCoultre diving watches. This 1960sicon was larger than the MemovoxDeep Sea, offering better readabilityunder water; its vibrating alarmsounded louder, thanks to its bronzeinside casing. The Master Mariner,produced in 1968-69, was watertightto 120 meters (394 feet). TheMemovox Polaris II was rolled out in1970-72; only about 1,000 of thispopular model were produced.

The design of the first MemovoxPolaris inspired the newest Jaeger-LeCoultre diving watches: the MasterCompressor Diving series forprofessionals. The Master CompressorDiving GMT and Master Compressor

Diving Chronograph are watertight to1,000 meters, another huge stepforward. Jérôme Lambert, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s chief executive, says: ‘‘Wefocus on water-resistance becauseit's part of our DNA in sports watches.We consider them instruments forprofessionals. It’s not just the look —casing and dial. It’s what’s inside. Youneed the particular functions linked tosports: miniaturization, waterresistance, high technology. We putthem all together.’’ Seventy peoplework in Jaeger-LeCoultre’s researchand development division alone toensure that these diving watchesremain on the cutting edge.

A school of pennantbannerfish.

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