TAGBILARAN CITY, Bohol, August 13, (PIA)—Seeing education critical in sustaining the rare Danajon Double Barrier Reef (DBR) north of Bohol, Talibon puts up an interpretative center as learning hub to help kids and adults better understand marine environmental issues associated with resource protection and conservation.
Housed at the old nurses home of the former Talibon Provincial Hospital, inside the Municipal Hall Complex, the interpretative center features a huge 3 dimensional model map of the entire coverage of the double barrier reef.
Said to be the only one in Asia, and among the six which can be found in the world, Danajon’s outer bank extends some 94 kilometers from Tubigon town at northwestern Bohol to Carlos P. Garcia, breaching into territories of four provinces.
Occupying some 214,268 hectares of the size of about 5 million basketball courts, Danajon’s two barrier reefs protect mainland Bohol specifically the northern side against devastating storms, while the fringing reefs provide the fish which island communities sustain themselves,” explained Rachelle Sayson, Talibon tourism officer.
Sayson, who also doubles up as the resident tour guide, dished out relevant information which delved on the conservation issues of the rare Danajon and the survival of communities drawing their protein requirements from the sea.
“Communicating these issues however proved to be tough to people who could be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the resource, and the 3D model was an attempt to take on the task in a smaller but exact scale,” sources at the local coastal resource management council shared.
“The 3D model was a product of a participatory 3D modeling (P3DM) workshop of stakeholders and integrates people’s knowledge and spatial information to produce a stand-alone scale relief model that shows a relatively accurate storage data and analysis devices as well as an excellent communication media,” according to a billboard explaining the massive map that occupies half of the building’s floor.
The 3D model graphically shows the inner and the outer banks of the Danajon, community profiles of the islands within it, as well as the degree of dependence of these communities to the fishing grounds.
Apart from the 3D model, the interactive center also features informative standees, wall installations as well as a diorama of a community’s common fishing methods showing both the legal and the illegal.
Set up, in cooperation with the United States Government through the ECOFish Project, the interpretative center has been picked by the Bohol Ecotourism Project in its new loop, it being an educational as well as interactive learning site for marine conservation and environmental protection.
The inspection and validation team from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Sustainable Environment for Panglao Project (SEPP) Bohol Tourism Office, tourism stakeholders and media all nodded in approval for the inclusion of the stop in the learning tour.
The stop is an information overload and it is among the best sources of marine resource protection information in a single stop, agreed a respected Bohol tour guide who joined the inspection at the site. (rac/PIA-7/Bohol)
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