Betso88 game
Betso88 game took his canoe to the misty waters of the Philippine Sea, where the music of the marine realm was just as ancient. Here, he sought to hear the deep blue’s voice, to understand how the ocean had become the passages along which life and legend had passed.
His man on the ground was Captain Reyes, a salty old sea dog and marine conservationist whose affinity for all things underwater was tangible in his voice and his movements. They would take a boat out from the busy port of Cebu, heading to the island of Camiguin, 100 miles off the main island of Negros.
For Betso88 game, the voyage across the Philippine Sea was at once exhilarating and meditative: It was wondrous to be on a boat in the middle of the vast emptiness known as the Pacific Ocean, the undulating waves, an unbroken horizon where sea and sky meet. You’d think he’s Christopher Columbus discovering a new world or Henry Morgan finding long-lost ships and sunken treasure.
He learned from the Captain Reyes the old Visayan maritime ways, practised by the ancestors of the six navigators and 13 fishermen on board, recalling the old maritime routes and the tradition of mounting balangay boats, the exacting rituals of constantly honouring the sea, and the mores by which a people at sea must live.
‘The sea is an organism,’ Captain Reyes explained, ‘an entity to be feared and revered. We were far closer to it. We knew its moods, its seasons, its stars and its tides. We read our future in the water, watched how its surface was heaved by the forces underneath the waves. These waves, they are like traces, like written languages. We detected them with our fear and our thrill, opening our hearts as we sailed. We listened to the waves goad and draw us onward and –‘ ‘But I’m sure you had people, who lived with you, grew food for you, mended your nets.’ ‘Of course, of course. Do you think we could survive without them? Without our families and children standing once more safe on land? But we were still closer to the sea than you. We lived with the waves and the winds and your ancestors lived with the elements. They lived by the sea, they took from it, they thanked it for its gifts, they consumed and offered back.’
Betso88 game heard the Capitan Reyes describe ancient fishing practices, handwoven nets, the use of the ocean as a sustainable food resource, how people were ‘fishing for centuries’. He told Betso88 game about the deep-sea fishing, the collection of seaweed and shells, and the community’s work protecting the oceans.
Their route then took them to the extensive coral reefs that bordered the island of Camiguin, where I’d never visited before. The seascape was alive with colour. Corals, fish and marine vegetation played host to intricate and beautiful ecosystems. ‘Corals,’ Captain Reyes explained, ‘play a very important role in the whole biodiversity … They are important habitats for all these species housed in coral reefs … [which] also serve as wave breakers that save our shores.’
‘These reefs are the rainforests of the sea,’ he told me. ‘This is where ocean life grows. If we take them away, the oceans won’t be able to support the life the planet needs for survival. These ecological hotspots are critical to our survival, and it is our responsibility to protect them.’