dead Coral pieces gathering on Philippine beaches illegal?

[freedom1]

Hi everyone,

I'm a foreigner living in the Philippines and I'm a amazed at the pieces & the beauty of dead corals & small and big shells that i find in the island where i am living. corals of all kinds , of all sizes brought by the sea directly to shore. I never broke any living coral and will never do it of course. I'm aware of a very "harsh" legislation with republic act 10654 from 2015 amending the fisheries code 8550 from 1998 that increases significantly penalties in the millions of pesos and even imprisonment. i think its a bit exaggerated for just a few pieces. maybe the law wants to punish big coral poachers and cyanide fishing etc but i haven't found any refernce to any distinction in the law. somewhere i had found that if the gathering or possession was less than 10 kg then the lower penalties of the old 8550 would apply (2.000 to 20.000 pesos) but im not sure about it. also big shells are supposed to be illegal but here everybody has them in their houses, sells them and even eats their meat on a regular basis. even the municipality where i live decorates the square with tridacna squamosa lol. big SM malls sell coral necklaces and big shells and even at airports in manila there are coral shops. so much hypocrisy in my opinion. so much confusion between local laws , customs restrictions, CITES international regulations etc. are we all criminals just because we pick something on the beach or we buy something at the mall? will we be fined millions of pesos and put in prison if we try to bring out of the country a few pieces of dead corals taken from the beach? also all the activities in this forum according to philippine law should be considered illegal as all corals are prohibited, no possession is allowed, except for scientific reasons. i don't agree with this of course but i'm against indiscriminate coral poaching of course.
let the discussion start if you wish
Maraming Salamat!


ps: i mean the governor of palawan can build dams made of dead coral and i cannot keep a few pieces from the beach? LOL

read the article below:

http://www.rappler.com/nation/156245-pa ... an-vicente

[freedom1]

wow nobody even commented on this issue? the whole coral forum went to sleep, i hope its not because of me LOL

[znerenz]

It's not you, it's us a lot of the active members have given up on the hobby so the activity here is almost non-existent

[freedom1]

[GreenGhost]

As a foreigner myself, I'd say the laws here are subject to application by whomever is on duty at the given time. Meaning if the police official on duty decides he feels like enforcing a law then he might decide to do it.

My impression is that the authorities here are not trying to zealous. If there's something that's serious, they'll most probably react. But if they are not getting complaints, they won't go looking. Personally I think that's reasonable in itself.

Some advice no one asked for would be if you're a foreigner here, go to university and study law. You would never be permitted to pass the BAR but it would help immensely if any legal issue presented itself. Law school graduates are a different (read: elevated) class than regular citizens. In layman's terms: no one will want to mess with you.

As far as taking things from the ocean, if you do it, be as subtle as possible. I think there's no problem with that.

Finally, maybe this opinion might strike a nerve and not be really popular (and my intention is not to anger/press people's buttons) but the level of respect for life here is a thousand times below general western levels. I see that pretty much everywhere I go and all in my daily activities. People here are indifferent and completely aloof with regards to animal life (and even human life). As long as it's not happening to them, they could care less.

I've known my reefer friends in the west to stay up all night or even miss days of work and risk getting fired taking care of their tanks. Huge difference in priority levels.

So they wrote an extreme law that allows the authorities to punish perpetrators. All at the discretion of the officer faced with the complaint or the severity level of the offense.

Makes sense?