Source : INQ7.net, Philippines, 17 Jan '05
By : Agence France-Presse
  

"There, there, uncle," Joseph Valeroso, perched atop the narrow bow, yelled to Tito Valeroso barely an hour into the hunt.

The elder man gunned the engine and the outrigger made a tight turn to starboard in pursuit of the melonhead whales. A flanking pod of Fraser's dolphins escaped to port.

In nine out of 10 cases in the past, the chase would have ended with the blood-soaked slaughter of one of the giant sea mammals, an astounding kill ratio far superior to those of Captain Ahab's fictional harpooners in Herman Melville's book "Moby Dick."

Now, however, the fearsome spears and gaffs are gone from the whaling boats of the central Philippines, replaced with videocam-toting tourists yelping with delight.

On this day a Western passenger on a nearby boat couldn't restrain himself and jumped into the 300-meter (328-yard) deep waters, trying to swim with the dolphins.

The hardy fishermen of Pamilacan, a limestone outcrop without fresh water that is home to about 250 families, hunted whales, whale sharks, dolphins and manta rays for as long as their parents could remember.

Whale sharks, the world's largest fish that grow up to 15 tons, were easy pickings because they tended to be docile and did not fight back.

In 1998 life on the island turned upside down with a nationwide whaling ban. Boats were impounded, driving some fishermen to penury.

"One day the whalers knocked on my door armed with machetes and threatened to kill me," said Joselino Baritua, a conservationist who had been sent by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to Pamilacan several months earlier to convince the islanders to give up their practice.

The whalers at first rejected the idea of becoming tourist guides of the high seas in the novel eco-tourism business of whale-watching.

"We thought about breaking the law because it's our livelihood," said the 30-year-old Joseph Valeroso, who apprenticed on a whale boat at 13.

Whale sharks and various giant sea mammals converge on the Bohol Sea off Pamilacan between January and April, feeding on millions of plankton, tiny shrimp as well as anchovies and schools of other small fish that spawn in the area.

Once 55-foot (18-meter) diesel boats with six-member hunting crews sortied daily from Pamilacan, named after the huge gaff with which they spear and land their giant quarry, and its beaches turned red where the animals were quartered in open-air abbattoirs.

Whale shark meat prices shot up with insatiable demand from nearby Asian countries. By 1997 the biggest catch was sold for for up to 120,000 pesos (2,135 dollars).

"Sometimes my crew caught four whale sharks in a day," said Tito Valeroso.

"You don't feel any pity at all because you also need to eat," he told Agence France-Presse.

Eventually though about 100 families signed on to the whale-watching tours, induced by a three-year, 150,000-dollar grant from a US bank that opened its deep pockets to the "Save the Whales" cause.

Baritua, now 37, quit the WWF to personally manage the new enterprise.

About 2,000 tourists took the tours last year, augmenting the former whalers' meager incomes from regular fishing.

"We have whaler guides for up to 100 tourists a day," said Baritua.

But some resort operators and travel agencies from nearby Bohol island now run their own whale-watching boat tours and the bypassed former whalers are livid.

"We tell these independent operators, 'If you insist on doing this, the people of Pamilacan would go back to killing whales and dolphins until you have nothing left to show the tourists,'" Baritua said.

Despite their eco-friendly undertaking, the Valerosos confess to missing the taste of whale and dolphin meat.

"Dolphin meat tastes like beef. Bryde's whales taste like prime beef," Joseph Valeroso said. "Whale shark meat is like pork. They catch fire on the grill because of the fat."