A few days ago, at the occasion of the DRT Show happening in Manila last week-end, we challenged you with a Marine trivia as part of our activities. Over the week-end, we had more than 150 recorded entrees, some took the challenge individually, some as pairs, and many of you took it as a group effort.
So tell us...
How well did you score in our marine trivia challenge?
You haven't had a chance to try it yet? You can still take the quiz!
First of all, THANK YOU for having fun with us and taking the challenge we did not expect so many of you would. During the event (you may read our event summary blog here) we had so many laughs looking at you trying to wrap your head over our questions! And truly, we were bluffed by your incredible energy, and how well you all scored.
Our trivia covered 30 questions divided in 3 parts: 1. Marine biodiversity and general knowledge, 2. Human impact on our marine environment and 3. Critters of the Philippines. And let us be honest: it was not an easy trivia to say the least. We aimed it to be educational and an eye opener on the incredible marine biodiversity of the Philippines (and its vulnerability). We asked you precise statistics on species diversity in the country; threats they face such as overfishing, bycatch, marine plastic, deforestation; we even asked you about your diet, or to identify critters and link it with their conservation status! We wanted you to think hard about REAL questions, and wow. you really did!!!
Cheers to the incredible teamwork some of you showed, hilarious competitiveness other had, and the positivity and enthusiasm ALL OF YOU HAD.
A few photos of some of our trivia participants this week-end:
Now about the results... You really did surprised us by doing SO WELL. Out of all 150 entries, the average score is 66%. This is high! Of course we knew that there would be some professionals and marine conservationists, biologists as part of the crowd, but we also knew that majority would not be. Many of you shyly participated warning us that "i'm not sure if i should participate, i don't know much...". Considering the difficulty of the trivia, we were truly impressed by how high this score average is. At date, the lower scores recorded are only 2 instances of 40%. And that is still quite good! Perhaps our trivia was too easy after all ? Expect it harder next time, we know not underestimate any of you now. ;)
Was the trivia too easy?
It was too hard!!!!
Easy peasy!
We had fun!
24 groups (or individuals) had a score of 80% and above, and 3 even reached more than 90%.
Congratulations !! You all did incredible.
Now... Would you like to learn the answers?
We learned a lot from looking at your results... You might be surprised too by some of it.
You all are a great sample of the population of ocean lovers in the Philippines, with participants from all ages and coming from various part of the country. Looking at what you knew and what challenged you was really interesting. Review with us some of the results, you might be surprised.
Many of you underestimated the Philippines biodiversity.
Half of the participants misidentified the 6 countries composing the Coral Triangle (the roughly triangular 6,000km2 area containing the highest marine biodiversity in the world). The 6 countries composing it are Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. In this region you can find more than 500 species of reef-building corals, a highest coral reef fish diversity than anywhere else in the world, 6 out of 7 species of sea turtles, and much more.
Many of the wrong answers were from participants who believed that Australia and/or Thailand are part of the Coral Triangle. This is a common belief because their coral reefs are heavily promoted and popular worldwide. They are however less biodiverse.
8% of the participants did not realized that the Philippines is part of the coral triangle. We are so happy to highlight the incredible marine biodiversity of the country.
50% of you underestimated how incredible biodiverse the Philippine archipelago is in term of plants and animal species. It is part of the 18's richest (megadiverse) country in the world, and contains 70-80% of all plants and animal species.
93% of you knew how important are Mangroves in terms of coastal protection, habitat, breeding and nursery grounds for many marine and terrestrial organisms, water filtration, Blue Carbon Sink, and much more. Many of you however were surprised to discover that the Philippines has a really high mangrove species diversity. Indeed, out of approximately 70 species of true mangrove (52 major and 16 minor and a number of hybrids) and 400 mangrove associates throughout the whole world, the Philippines has approximately 46 “true mangrove” and associated species belonging to 26 families. This is more than 65%.
Most of you are well versed in corals.
Good job, 85% of you knew that corals are animals! Corals are commonly mistaken for plants or rocks because of their small size and appearance, but they are small fragile colonial animals. In tropical waters, corals create the irreplaceable foundation of coral reef ecosystems, one of the most biodiverse marine habitats in the world. As most of you know, they are extremely vulnerable to temperature change, water quality, pollution, touch, impact, algae overgrowth, and much more. Unfortunately, coral populations are decreasing at alarming rate.
We were relieved to find out that majority of you knew that despite their bad reputation, the corallivore Crown-of-thorns starfish are essential for coral reef ecosystem health and should never be removed from healthy reef. It is important to minimize overfishing and protect predatory fish to avoid outbreaks. (you can read more about this topic here).
Statistics about human impacts were difficult....
We saw and understood the conflicting thoughts. We hear you and deeply share them. However it is important to understand our impact, in order to address it and improve.
Many of you were surprised by how much plastic actually enter our seas every year, and how long does it take for 1 single item to disappear. We took the example of a disposable diaper, they take approximately 450 years to disappear in a landfill. Considering that the first disposable plastic diaper was launched in 1948 by J&J., this means they are ALL still out there somewhere under a form or another! If they found their way into the ocean, due to the sun, salt and water, they may degrade faster and break down in smaller & smaller pieces creating microplastics. Despite being smaller, they are still there, impacting the ocean and being ingested by marine life (and eventually, us). (Curious about plastic pollution and ways to minimize it? You may read more about the topic here)
Most of you were very aware of the impact of diet into our daily environmental impact, and knowledgable about the link between agriculture (especially meat and dairies) and deforestation, along with the negative impact of overfishing. We seem to have surprised you though by discussing bycatch rates, and reminding you that eating shrimps that are caught via bottom trawling (a common technique for it) have a heavy environmental cost. Indeed, 90% of the fish catch when targeting shrimp via bottom trawling is bycatch and most ends up dead, injured and discarded. (Bycatch is the involuntary catch and discard of marine animals by the fishing industry. In fisheries that include gears such as bottom trawling, or long line fishing, bycatch is high. Annually, 38 million metric tons of marine species are caught by bycatch including 300,000 small whales and dolphins, 50 million sharks and rays and 250,000 sea turtles that die every year for nothing.)
Because this was so depressing, we continued with looking at some of the cute critters of the Philippines and tested your identification skills. And you did sooo well!
You rocked critter identification!
90% of you correctly identified our nudibranch,
80% found our school of spadefish easy to identify,
100% of you recognized our stingray,
82% got our pufferfish,
but at least we managed to trick most of you thinking our wrasse was a parrotfish! Wrasse can be really colorful and easily be confused for parrotfish. If you get confused in between both, know that they have a different mouth (parrotfish have a beak), this may help correct identification.
Wrasse - Thalassoma lunare, Leonard Low from Australia - Wikipedia on the left and Parrotfish - Scarus Vetula on the left from WiseOceans
What is endangered, what is not? This was a bit confusing...
IUCN red list status was hard, this is expected, we wanted you to reflect on what remains in the wild what is still healthy, what isn't. The IUCN Red List Index shows trends in overall extinction risk for species. Governments use the Index to track their progress towards targets for reducing biodiversity loss. You can explore their website here, they provide incredible resources to learn more about the status of species across the world, from marine to terrestrial ones with data across different regions including Philippines. Let's review some.
The Scalloped Hammerhead is a critically endangered species. This category contains species that possess an extremely high risk of extinction as a result of rapid population declines of 80 to more than 90 percent over the previous 10 years (or three generations), a current population size of fewer than 50 individuals, or other factors. This is also the case of the Oceanic Whitetip shark, Great Hammerhead along with many other species. Hawksbill sea turtles are unfortunately also of part of this category.
Green turtles are listed as endangered with decreasing population. Many species of Whales, Dolphins, sharks and rays (including Blue Whale, Whale Sharks, Oceanic Manta, Spotted Eagle Ray, and many others) are also listed endangered due to an alarming decline. Napoleon Wrasse is also part of this list. Endangered status is a designation applied to species that possess a very high risk of extinction as a result of rapid population declines of 50 to more than 70% over the previous 10 years (or three generations), a current population size of fewer than 250 individuals, or other factors.
Loggerhead Sea turtle and Leatherback sea turtle are vulnerable, a category containing those species that possess a very high risk of extinction as a result of rapid population declines of 30 to more than 50 percent over the previous 10 years (or three generations), a current population size of fewer than 1,000 individuals, or other factors.
Thankfully Anemonefishes are still listed as "least concern" for now, despite an alarming demand for aquarium trade after the popular movies (leading in many illegal catch via cyanide fishing).
We tricked you with a similar question with the coral species Platygyra Daedalae. It is listed as "least concern" by the IUCN with an alert note on a decreasing population. However, looking closer into it, you would realize that the last assessment for platygyra date from 2008: 16 years ago ! All hard coral species are currently highly threatened and at high risk due to climate change and repetitive bleaching events (along with pollution, acidification, bottom trawling, sedimentation, and so many other anthropogenic threats). In 16 years, much has happened, and for corals, not in the right direction. Only this year, 97% of the Northern part of the Australian Great Barrier reef has died amid record-breaking sea surface temperatures. This question was made to highlight the importance of research, consistent data collection and lack of manpower in conservation (despite the fantastic work of the IUCN, they also face such issues. it is quite some work to keep track on the status of 260,000 species). Environmental conservation needs help. It needs all of us to gather and help with all the different skills we can bring to the table.
This also calls our attention to preventive collective measures to protect our seas and species that live in it before it is too late. That was the case for the Japanese sea Lion (Zalophus japonicus) who was an aquatic mammal from Japan that became extinct in the 1970s. Let us not have Philippine species follow its path.
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