MAN & SEA
amongst the poorest in the world.
The population of Tan-awan is around
1,500, with 80 percent of residents
working as fishers. Farming is not an
option as the terrain around Tan-awan
is too steep to grow rice. Even then,
fishing in Tan-awan is seasonal and
fishermen can only fish around eightmonths a year. The average income of
a fisherman was approximately 2,
pesos, or USD40 per month.
Locals would grow corn for the
family table but crops are prone to
disease and have failed in recent
typhoons. Many fishermen could not
give their families three meals a day,
and the quality of the fish they ate was
low because they sold their best catch
for income. Salted fish is commonly
eaten as it can be preserved without
refrigeration, but consuming it has
many health risks. Many fishermen
and their families would migrate to
cities to find work and send money
home, but most remained unemployedThanks to new
employment
opportunities in
Oslob, fishermen and
women are returning
to the village from
the citiesdue to their lack of education.AN ALTERNATIVE LIVELIHOOD
Whale shark tourism in Oslob creates
alternative livelihoods for more than
170 TOSWFA fishermen and their
families. Those who are closest to
Oslob benefit the most but arguably,
everyone in the community benefits.
The primary benefit to fishermen is
their salary and working conditions.
TOSWFA has members up to 70 years
of age, while youth can work part time
to earn money for school. The income
allows TOSWFA fishers to provide
their families with better quality food
three meals a day. The fishermen can
now build brick houses that cannot be
blown down in typhoons. They can buy
appliances, motorbikes and vehicles.
Fishermen can now care for their
elderly parents and send their children
to college. Some fishermen learn
foreign languages through working
with dive tourists. The coastal land
on which Oslob operates belongs to
TOSWFA families who receive lease
payments. Many of the souvenir shops,
restaurants and roadside stores are
owned by TOSWFA families, built on
family land with loans from TOSWFA.
Other residents own or are
employed in businesses that have
sprung up to support whale shark
tourism. Residents work in resorts and
restaurants serving dive tourists, orprovides livelihoods to fishermen and
communities in the form of payments
for not fishing; payments for the
lease of coastal land, dive user fees,
or goods and services; employment
and training; and community benefit
programmes. Alternative livelihoods
are achieved when a fisherman leaves
the fishery to earn income another
way. Even though dive tourism
owned by expatriates and national
elites employs local people to some
extent, it is rarely enough to create an
alternative to fishing. Most of the time,
fishermen diversify their livelihoods
with income from dive tourism but they
don’t earn enough to allow them to
leave the fishery.
Before Oslob Whale Sharks,
the coral reefs and fisheries of Oslob
were severely degraded, when Oslob
was home to a destructive fishing
practice called muro-ami. In a highly
systematic and destructive fishing
technique, children pounded coral
reefs with weights attached to lines
to scare fish into nets. With the catch
capacity of a large trawler, muro-
ami vessels destroyed coral reefs
and deepened the poverty of Oslob
fishermen. Many TOSWFA fishermen
were muro-ami child slaves. Today,
Tan-awan has very little coral.
Oslob is one of the poorest
municipalities in the Philippines, and
the fishermen of Tan-awan were