I am joining the June 8 Blog Action Day to Save our Coral Reefs and Seas, and I believe every Filipino with a blog should do the same.

The Philippines as a country has been blessed with amazing natural resources such as stunning beaches, a very diverse marine life and spectacular reefs.  Unfortunately, a lot of us have taken these for granted and worse, they have been exploited and plundered by both foreign and local groups.

If the news on how poachers have destroyed an “entire ‘reef complex’—almost twice as big as Manila—off the coast of Cotabato province” when they harvested more than 21,000 pieces of black coral and in the process killing 161 endangered turtles and other marine life is not an eye-opener for you, I don’t know what will.

How long has this happening?  How come we only knew about this today?  Who’s responsible for this?  What can we do to prevent it from happening again?

I don’t know the answers to the first two questions but what I do know is that WE are ALL responsible for this and ALL of US can do something about it.  NOW.

The protection and preservation of our coral reefs and seas for future generations begins now and we all can have a part to make this happen.

June 8 has been declared Blog Action Day to Save our Coral Reefs and Seas. The least we can do is to join this collective effort and use our voices, online and offline, to spread the word about the plunder of our seas and we all can do to stop it.  You can find out more information by visiting the Save The Philippine Seas site, following it on Twitter and liking the fanpage on Facebook.

I’ve also posted the following on Yahoo! to help spread the cause…

YAHOO ANSWERS

Share your ideas on what we can do to save our seas by answering this question:

What can we do to save our coral reefs and seas?

FLICKR

Check out these photos of underwater shots in the Philippines through this Flickr gallery I created.  This gives us a glimpse of what we need to cherish, what we need to protect, what we need to be proud of.