Visit to a CDT Lab.
After verifying that the old hive was devoid of all flunkies/protégés of my old sparring mate Corazon del Mundo, I decided to surprise the troops at BFAR (Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources) Main, here in Quezon City, Philippines. The old Arcadia Building looked spiffed up, and it was with a shock that I realized it was actually next door to the notorious Pegasus "gentlemen's club", a brightly lit nighttime landmark. I never connected the younger institution with the Arcadia's location; but anyway.
I had originally intended to look into Ferdinand Cruz' suspicion that Batasan Island in Bohol was actually off-limits to ornamentals collection by virtue of an old MPA (Marine Protected Area) designation. BFAR Legal Department apparently knows of no such designation, but admits that some of the older slugs at DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) might know otherwise. So, Ferdie, it seems that the Dimayuga op is still in the clear with respect to local environmental law. I'd try to visit the DENR next week, but I have very, very few friends there, and have to be very careful not to be recognized by old enemies.
A pleasant surprise was finding some old friends still at it, though further up the totem pole than I remember. I got to ask quite a number of questions regarding CDT facilities and practical use thereof throughout the Philippines. I will not name names, but I did leave Sandy A. out of it ---I talked to the people doing the actual testing, in the hope that they would be less guarded.
There are presently four (4) CDT facilities operating in the Philippines, all using equipment paid for by the Filipino people, down to glassware.
No money or equipment was ever received from a foreign organization or indvidual, towards setting up these facilities, nor the (in their own words) largely-unnecessary (re)training of Filipino scientists in the use of said equipment.
These testing labs are located in:
a. Quezon City, Metro Manila ---in the North
b. Puerto Princesa (not Coron), Palawan ---in the West
c. Tacloban, Leyte ---in the Central-East, apparently relocated from elsewhere.
d. Davao City, Davao ---in the war-torn South
e. **a fifth facility, in Cebu, wasn't represented by photos. It is said to be identically equipped, if somewhat 'unpopular' (I didn't understand what they meant by that, and the converstaion was so fleet in changing topic I never got to revisit).
I got to see photos of the labs in the other three locations, and they seemed to bear out the claim that the facilities are virtually identical in equipment and capability. One of the techs had rotated out of the Cebu lab and could vouch for his fomer place of work. The Quezon City lab has equipment up on the second floor in a much cleaner building than I remember, with some more stuff on the ground floor.
The rooms were pretty spartan, but clean and tidy.
Not a few fluorescent bulbs needed changing.
The coats and motley techs looked pretty sleep-deprived but courteously helpful, and I was hard put keeping the conversation at layman's level. They actually tried to teach me --and they were plenty determined-- EXACTLY how their test differed from the lower-pressure gas chromatography and IR spectro I was used to in college (graduated from UP Diliman, eh, so he's a nerd like us ---shyeahh right), while my wife graciously restrained tears of abject boredom.
Anyway, a curious thing (for outsiders) is that ornamentals collected in Northern Palawan, such as from Coron Island, are sent to Quezon City, Metro Manila for testing. It actually takes longer to send it to Palawan's capital. A sample from Coron takes 24 hours max to reach BFAR Main here in Quezon City. It can take much more than twice as long for it to get to Puerto Princesa, if you're unlucky. That's capitalism and the profit-based development of commercial air- and sea-routes for you.
The testing facilities are ISE and tissue-based (not Picric acid, tankwater-based as I had feared). The threshold for clearing a sample, declaring it "clean" in the eyes of the law, remains at 0.2 ppm (I was made to understand that this figure was take from literature prepared by someone familiar to this board, all as stipulated in a quasi-consultancy contract which the same person failed to deliver completely on, but I digress). You really can hold a cyanide capture for 24++ hours to let it piss all the evidence out and it'll get a "clean" bill of health, though the tech will KNOW its dirty.
While there has been a lot of yelling that for a CDT, "zero ought to be zero" (and I'm here, about to give up a long-held restraint kept for the sake of avoiding argument with those who claim to know more than others) people should understand a couple of things. The operators say the equipment has shown it can detect cyanide down to concentrations of .05 ppm --any less than that simply IS zero to the test.
Cyanide occurs naturally in the body, though in super low quantities, and perhaps some study on vitamin B12 and its kin is in order for all interested, just for the sake of intellectual honesty. The point is it's never going to be really, truly zero. More relevant, anthropogenic sources of cyanide (from mining activities and plastics manufacture) can taint what is a cleanly-captured ornamental. Unrelated cyanide fishing in the area is also a potetial cause of false positives. Mindoro has a lot of commercial and backyard mining and refining going on, and this is common throughout the Visayas. From Leyte on up to the Bicol region there are a lot of secret gold and silver ops, and backyard refineries, and while mercury is expensive, cyanide is cheap, remember?
There isn't any data on fish tissue taken from river deltas that are downstream from mines and/or plastics factories to allow BFAR to tailor its thresholds to such local conditions. If you want to help out, try sending any such data to BFAR or if you like to me so I can give it to them. Don't ask me to goddamn pay for it because I probably make less in a goddamned month of OT what you make in an effing day. PDF, MS Word, text file, or hardcopy, we don't care ---they'll take any peer-reviewed reference for study and consideration.
The last ornamental sample submitted to the Quezon City lab was a trigger from Bataan, over a month ago. Before that, there was a very small batch of fishes sent for clearance by a certain Paul Holthus (I've seen his name mentioned on this board and as tired as I am, I really don't give half an utot who he is, but there it is for your interest. Like me, they don't know him from jack, but the foreign name stuck) back in December or January-ish. In case it isn't clear yet, the bulk of testing is done on commercial food fish, more than nine out of ten being groupers, apparently intended for the HK and Taiwan market. Private companies can pay around P250 to have a sample tested, and this Holthus person at least paid his due fair and square, unlike some would-be messiahs from overseas.
Some representatives of foreign eco/aquaristic organizations try to use the Philippines' image as a cyanide hell-hole as a means to extract US government funding for unrelated uses. Maybe someone could, say, draw up a plan that will use, say $40,000 in US funding towards, say, "Enhanced CDT Labs" here, but will actually execute by "borrowing" (not even renting!) BFAR's existing equipment and personnel for the whole exercise. No improvement to the existing CDT infrastructure, and virtually no transfer of technology since it's the same goddamned equipment BFAR bought, paid fairly for, and is currently using, --operated by the same regular-wage BFAR techies who might then be scratching their heads over just who is being helped by US funds, and what CDT enhancements are being discovered. Leche. Punyeta.
Sorry, off-topic, but...
what the heck ---we're there anyway so might as well go all the way:
When I mentioned John Brandt, hehe there were knowing looks to each other and restrained smiles all around. When I mentioned another familiar name ---well, I think this know-it-all can imagine what BFAR and most local environmentalists and eco-organizations think of him.
Okay, okay... I'm done with the venting.
Anyway there it is: the CDT lab in QC, which handles practically everything from Bataan, Zambales, Pangasinan, Quezon, Batangas, the Mindoros, Northern Palawan and even Bohol (when the Cebu lab is closed for local fiestas) got only two submissions of ornamental samples for testing, since October of 2002 to today. The Bataan sample barely cleared the test. The foodfish? We're talking up to hundreds of samples in a month.
Two ornamental submissions from October 2002 to first week of May 2003.
How many units of ornamentals were shipped to the US in that period of time? How many were declared as tested and cleared?
BFAR legal is severely undermanned and generally, BFAR really gets by on employees spending their own money to inspect and identify offenders. As if that isn't bad enough, please be aware that if an exporter/wholesaler gets his/her photo taken with a foreign environmental organization's visiting rep, then that's all she wrote for inspection and enforcement. That exporter/wholesaler will simply flash the photo to politicians, mention potential dollar eco-aid (man, talk about building up false expectations), and orders will come down from Olympus for BFAR to leave said exporter/wholesaler alone ---he/she's free to screw the environment.
John, Mike K, etc.--- be careful with the effing photo ops, please.
Try not to look like you're endorsing a goddamned candidate for public office.
I actually remember a screw-you fiasco due to a simple photo with Daniel Knop in Cebu some years back. No, Knop wasn't guilty of anything, but the photo op paved the way for kid-glove treatment of a certain notorious PTFEA member. The bast got away with murder through two administrations.
As I left the BFAR, I noticed an aquaristic crime:
A goldfish 50 gallon (approx 50, okay?), with over a dozen fist-sized Orandas lolling around. No filter, no substrate, no nothing, except a fragmentary membrane thermometer(???) and a powerhead. The cloudy water seemed to smell of ammonia. This, in the middle of BFAR.
But hold on.
Turns out, the fish were an unsolicited, unwanted gift from some exporter that morning
They get all kinds of crap like that all the time, delivered in several plastic bags with a greeting card. It's a miracle BFAR flunkies found an empty tank and stand to put those poor things into. The guard said it was temporary, until the working day ended and they could figure out whose kids would get a fish for a pet, or who could sell the poor Orandas.
A stranger walking in would have looked at the tragic tank and deduced that all of BFAR was clueless and uncaring. By asking questions, I found the truth ---All the BFAR regular staff I met make do with what they have, and fight the good fight, while many others (here and overseas) pretend to fight only when donor and sponsor dollars are up for grabs. Leche, but even the security guard who could barely speak English volunteered that the goldfish were suffering from "ammonia".
I'll be back next week to learn more, or maybe just to cheer them up.
Knowing that their efforts can count for something likely gets buried under the drudgery of test after test.
Horge
After verifying that the old hive was devoid of all flunkies/protégés of my old sparring mate Corazon del Mundo, I decided to surprise the troops at BFAR (Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources) Main, here in Quezon City, Philippines. The old Arcadia Building looked spiffed up, and it was with a shock that I realized it was actually next door to the notorious Pegasus "gentlemen's club", a brightly lit nighttime landmark. I never connected the younger institution with the Arcadia's location; but anyway.
I had originally intended to look into Ferdinand Cruz' suspicion that Batasan Island in Bohol was actually off-limits to ornamentals collection by virtue of an old MPA (Marine Protected Area) designation. BFAR Legal Department apparently knows of no such designation, but admits that some of the older slugs at DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources) might know otherwise. So, Ferdie, it seems that the Dimayuga op is still in the clear with respect to local environmental law. I'd try to visit the DENR next week, but I have very, very few friends there, and have to be very careful not to be recognized by old enemies.
A pleasant surprise was finding some old friends still at it, though further up the totem pole than I remember. I got to ask quite a number of questions regarding CDT facilities and practical use thereof throughout the Philippines. I will not name names, but I did leave Sandy A. out of it ---I talked to the people doing the actual testing, in the hope that they would be less guarded.
There are presently four (4) CDT facilities operating in the Philippines, all using equipment paid for by the Filipino people, down to glassware.
No money or equipment was ever received from a foreign organization or indvidual, towards setting up these facilities, nor the (in their own words) largely-unnecessary (re)training of Filipino scientists in the use of said equipment.
These testing labs are located in:
a. Quezon City, Metro Manila ---in the North
b. Puerto Princesa (not Coron), Palawan ---in the West
c. Tacloban, Leyte ---in the Central-East, apparently relocated from elsewhere.
d. Davao City, Davao ---in the war-torn South
e. **a fifth facility, in Cebu, wasn't represented by photos. It is said to be identically equipped, if somewhat 'unpopular' (I didn't understand what they meant by that, and the converstaion was so fleet in changing topic I never got to revisit).
I got to see photos of the labs in the other three locations, and they seemed to bear out the claim that the facilities are virtually identical in equipment and capability. One of the techs had rotated out of the Cebu lab and could vouch for his fomer place of work. The Quezon City lab has equipment up on the second floor in a much cleaner building than I remember, with some more stuff on the ground floor.
The rooms were pretty spartan, but clean and tidy.
Not a few fluorescent bulbs needed changing.
The coats and motley techs looked pretty sleep-deprived but courteously helpful, and I was hard put keeping the conversation at layman's level. They actually tried to teach me --and they were plenty determined-- EXACTLY how their test differed from the lower-pressure gas chromatography and IR spectro I was used to in college (graduated from UP Diliman, eh, so he's a nerd like us ---shyeahh right), while my wife graciously restrained tears of abject boredom.
Anyway, a curious thing (for outsiders) is that ornamentals collected in Northern Palawan, such as from Coron Island, are sent to Quezon City, Metro Manila for testing. It actually takes longer to send it to Palawan's capital. A sample from Coron takes 24 hours max to reach BFAR Main here in Quezon City. It can take much more than twice as long for it to get to Puerto Princesa, if you're unlucky. That's capitalism and the profit-based development of commercial air- and sea-routes for you.
The testing facilities are ISE and tissue-based (not Picric acid, tankwater-based as I had feared). The threshold for clearing a sample, declaring it "clean" in the eyes of the law, remains at 0.2 ppm (I was made to understand that this figure was take from literature prepared by someone familiar to this board, all as stipulated in a quasi-consultancy contract which the same person failed to deliver completely on, but I digress). You really can hold a cyanide capture for 24++ hours to let it piss all the evidence out and it'll get a "clean" bill of health, though the tech will KNOW its dirty.
While there has been a lot of yelling that for a CDT, "zero ought to be zero" (and I'm here, about to give up a long-held restraint kept for the sake of avoiding argument with those who claim to know more than others) people should understand a couple of things. The operators say the equipment has shown it can detect cyanide down to concentrations of .05 ppm --any less than that simply IS zero to the test.
Cyanide occurs naturally in the body, though in super low quantities, and perhaps some study on vitamin B12 and its kin is in order for all interested, just for the sake of intellectual honesty. The point is it's never going to be really, truly zero. More relevant, anthropogenic sources of cyanide (from mining activities and plastics manufacture) can taint what is a cleanly-captured ornamental. Unrelated cyanide fishing in the area is also a potetial cause of false positives. Mindoro has a lot of commercial and backyard mining and refining going on, and this is common throughout the Visayas. From Leyte on up to the Bicol region there are a lot of secret gold and silver ops, and backyard refineries, and while mercury is expensive, cyanide is cheap, remember?
There isn't any data on fish tissue taken from river deltas that are downstream from mines and/or plastics factories to allow BFAR to tailor its thresholds to such local conditions. If you want to help out, try sending any such data to BFAR or if you like to me so I can give it to them. Don't ask me to goddamn pay for it because I probably make less in a goddamned month of OT what you make in an effing day. PDF, MS Word, text file, or hardcopy, we don't care ---they'll take any peer-reviewed reference for study and consideration.
The last ornamental sample submitted to the Quezon City lab was a trigger from Bataan, over a month ago. Before that, there was a very small batch of fishes sent for clearance by a certain Paul Holthus (I've seen his name mentioned on this board and as tired as I am, I really don't give half an utot who he is, but there it is for your interest. Like me, they don't know him from jack, but the foreign name stuck) back in December or January-ish. In case it isn't clear yet, the bulk of testing is done on commercial food fish, more than nine out of ten being groupers, apparently intended for the HK and Taiwan market. Private companies can pay around P250 to have a sample tested, and this Holthus person at least paid his due fair and square, unlike some would-be messiahs from overseas.
Some representatives of foreign eco/aquaristic organizations try to use the Philippines' image as a cyanide hell-hole as a means to extract US government funding for unrelated uses. Maybe someone could, say, draw up a plan that will use, say $40,000 in US funding towards, say, "Enhanced CDT Labs" here, but will actually execute by "borrowing" (not even renting!) BFAR's existing equipment and personnel for the whole exercise. No improvement to the existing CDT infrastructure, and virtually no transfer of technology since it's the same goddamned equipment BFAR bought, paid fairly for, and is currently using, --operated by the same regular-wage BFAR techies who might then be scratching their heads over just who is being helped by US funds, and what CDT enhancements are being discovered. Leche. Punyeta.
Sorry, off-topic, but...
what the heck ---we're there anyway so might as well go all the way:
When I mentioned John Brandt, hehe there were knowing looks to each other and restrained smiles all around. When I mentioned another familiar name ---well, I think this know-it-all can imagine what BFAR and most local environmentalists and eco-organizations think of him.
Okay, okay... I'm done with the venting.
Anyway there it is: the CDT lab in QC, which handles practically everything from Bataan, Zambales, Pangasinan, Quezon, Batangas, the Mindoros, Northern Palawan and even Bohol (when the Cebu lab is closed for local fiestas) got only two submissions of ornamental samples for testing, since October of 2002 to today. The Bataan sample barely cleared the test. The foodfish? We're talking up to hundreds of samples in a month.
Two ornamental submissions from October 2002 to first week of May 2003.
How many units of ornamentals were shipped to the US in that period of time? How many were declared as tested and cleared?
BFAR legal is severely undermanned and generally, BFAR really gets by on employees spending their own money to inspect and identify offenders. As if that isn't bad enough, please be aware that if an exporter/wholesaler gets his/her photo taken with a foreign environmental organization's visiting rep, then that's all she wrote for inspection and enforcement. That exporter/wholesaler will simply flash the photo to politicians, mention potential dollar eco-aid (man, talk about building up false expectations), and orders will come down from Olympus for BFAR to leave said exporter/wholesaler alone ---he/she's free to screw the environment.
John, Mike K, etc.--- be careful with the effing photo ops, please.
Try not to look like you're endorsing a goddamned candidate for public office.
I actually remember a screw-you fiasco due to a simple photo with Daniel Knop in Cebu some years back. No, Knop wasn't guilty of anything, but the photo op paved the way for kid-glove treatment of a certain notorious PTFEA member. The bast got away with murder through two administrations.
As I left the BFAR, I noticed an aquaristic crime:
A goldfish 50 gallon (approx 50, okay?), with over a dozen fist-sized Orandas lolling around. No filter, no substrate, no nothing, except a fragmentary membrane thermometer(???) and a powerhead. The cloudy water seemed to smell of ammonia. This, in the middle of BFAR.
But hold on.
Turns out, the fish were an unsolicited, unwanted gift from some exporter that morning
They get all kinds of crap like that all the time, delivered in several plastic bags with a greeting card. It's a miracle BFAR flunkies found an empty tank and stand to put those poor things into. The guard said it was temporary, until the working day ended and they could figure out whose kids would get a fish for a pet, or who could sell the poor Orandas.
A stranger walking in would have looked at the tragic tank and deduced that all of BFAR was clueless and uncaring. By asking questions, I found the truth ---All the BFAR regular staff I met make do with what they have, and fight the good fight, while many others (here and overseas) pretend to fight only when donor and sponsor dollars are up for grabs. Leche, but even the security guard who could barely speak English volunteered that the goldfish were suffering from "ammonia".
I'll be back next week to learn more, or maybe just to cheer them up.
Knowing that their efforts can count for something likely gets buried under the drudgery of test after test.
Horge
