PUERTO PRINCESA CITY—As the Philippine and Chinese governments fight for control over territories in the South China Sea, the sustainability of the waterway’s rich marine resources has become the silent casualty in the dispute, according to a marine expert.
“A Scarborough [Shoal] peace park right now could be the foot in the door for the entire [South China Sea] situation,” John McManus, a leading marine scientist from the University of Miami, told the Inquirer during a recent visit to Puerto Princesa City, capital of Palawan province.
McManus has proposed to China and the Philippines to set aside their territorial dispute over Scarborough Shoal—known to Filipinos as Panatag Shoal—not only to ease the tensions between them but also to preserve what global marine experts claim to be one of the most beautiful and productive coral reefs in the world.
McManus is also behind a proposal to create an international peace park in the Spratly Islands following the conduct of marine studies in the late 1990s on reef and fishery conditions in the disputed region.
A professor of marine biology and fisheries and director of the National Center for Coral Reef Research at Rosenstiel School of the University of Miami, McManus pioneered a scientific research initiative to map out coral reefs in the world, through a project called Reefbase.