General Introduction:

The Philippines along with the Solomon Islands, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and Timor Leste, which constitute the region called “The Coral Triangle”, is regarded as the world’s centre of marine biodiversity (Green and Mous 2004; Fidelman et al. in press). This archipelagic region with an area of about 5.7 million km2 and 153 000 km of coastline (Fidelman et al. in press) holds the world’s highest coral diversity of around 500 species (Green and Mous 2004). The Philippines, as part of this region, has more than 17 000 km coastline (BFAR 2008) with 44 000 km2 of coral reefs (McAllister 1988), of which, 27 000 km2 of coral reefs were shallower than 10 – 20 fathoms (18.3 – 36.6 m) where reef fisheries occur (BFAR 2008). The Philippines has about 120 endemic fish species of which 31 are marine and a total of more than 3 000 fish species have been reported (Alava et al. 2009), > 3 000 molluscs, > 400 species of scleractenian corals, and nearly 1 000 species of benthic algae (see McAllister 1988; Licuanan and Gomez 2000). The Philippines is therefore regarded as the world’s centre of the centre of marine shore fishes with a high degree of endemism (see Alava et al. 2009).

Read More: STATUS AND CONSERVATION OF THE REEF GASTROPOD Trochus niloticus IN THE PHILIPPINES

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