Swimming with Mermaids

Wazzup Pilipinas!

My too-tight wetsuit’s turning into a sauna but I don’t mind. We’re aboard a double-decked dive boat in Calauit Island in oh-too-sunny Northern Palawan and today might finally be the day. Over the years, I’ve met some of the sea’s most amazing residents – from macho tiger sharks to playful dolphins – but one creature has been more elusive than others.

With underwater photographer Danny Ocampo and expert guides from the Tagbanua tribe, we’re finally hoping for some downtime with a dugong.

Dugongs are legendary sea creatures, having inspired lonely seamen’s ‘sightings’ of mermaids (being out at sea for months or years, who can blame them). Their last relatives were Stellar’s sea cows (Hydrodamalis gigas), which were wiped out by hunters just 36 years after being discovered by scientists.

“It’s still early so we have a fairly good chance of sightings. Look for splashes or shadows near the surface,” explains our guide Dodong Valera. We gaze at our swim-spotter swimming a hundred feet away, homemade plastic fins slapping the sea’s surface. “There are around 30 dugongs in this area. If we’re lucky, we’ll see the largest and friendliest of them all,Aban.”

My brain’s baking from the heat, so I nod absentmindedly and slop seawater inside my wetsuit, trying to cool down. Twenty minutes and a pound of sweat later, the spotter finally gives the signal: target sighted!

Excitedly, we become one with fin and rig and slide gleefully into a vast expanse of seagrass.

SIRENIANS

Dugongs (Dugong dugon) are distant cousins of elephants, growing up to three-meters and weighing about 400 kilogrammes. Also called sea cows, they inhabit shallow waters of the Coral Triangle, wherever seagrass is most abundant. They are the fourth member of the order Sirenia, alongside the three manatee species. A fifth, the gigantic eight-meter long Steller’s sea cow, was completely wiped out by 1768. Dugongcomes from the Malay word duyung, which means ‘lady of the sea.’

Sizeable herds of dugongs once plied the Philippine archipelago until hunting and habitat destruction reduced numbers. Populations still hold out in Isabela, Mindanao, Guimaras and Palawan, but encounters are extremely rare.

Dugongs are thought to live as long as humans (about 70 years), but give birth to just a single calf every three to five years. They are globally classified as vulnerableand are considered critically endangered in the Philippines because of their sparse numbers. Prior to our Coron trip, I’ve spent 20 years looking for one – they’re just thatrare.

Says dugong conservationist Dr. Teri Aquino, “We can learn a lot about sustainable use and responsible stewardship from the dugong. It consumes a lot of seagrass yet leaves the seagrass bed even healthier than before. When feeding, they help release micronutrients from the seabed, making nutrients more accessible for small fish – and this is why we always see fish swimming with dugongs. This gentle marine mammal living the simplest of lives is one of the best caretakers of our seagrass habitats and the animals that live in them.”

A FAMOUS DUGONG

After 20 years of waiting, I’m finally face-to-face with a dugong. It’s not like a whale that steals your breath because of sheer size, nor a shark that inspires more than just a hint of fear, no matter how small it is. Dugongs are huge but friendly, just like a mermaid Hodor.

Dodong signals us to keep at least five meters away from the obliviously grazing bull, crunching on clumps of Halophila ovalis, which unlike most types of seagrass, has small round leaves instead of flowing grass blades. Dugongs wolf down up to 40 kilogrammes a day, keeping hectares of seagrass pruned and productive. Danny starts shooting.

As the animal ambles closer, I notice fighting scars on his hide. This is Aban, confirms Dodong with a nod. Owing to his good nature and natural curiosity, generations of divers have swam and photographed the scarred, three-meter long dugong, who seems perennially surrounded by colourful golden trevally. I notice his skin is brown and not grey (dugongs only look grey in pictures because they’re usually photographed below three meters), his beady eyes and his serene, Siddhartha Gautama-level expression. 

Magical minutes pass, then we fin up to leave the meditative mammal be. Incredibly, Aban says goodbye, circling around us on the surface. I wave adios as he dives and disappears into the teal waters. 

Though dugongs are protected by law nationwide, they still get accidentally entangled in fishing gear and drown. The once-vast seagrass meadows they depend on for food are being destroyed by coastal reclamation and pollution. By protecting not just dugongs – but the seagrass meadows that support them – tomorrow’s Pinoys might too get a chance to come face to face with the real mermaids of the sea.

We climb back on our boat, exchanging high-fives and fresh tales to share with other environment-lovers. The boat revs its engines and we’re off with big smiles etched on our faces.

To book your dugong adventure, contact the Dugong Dive Center’s Dirk Fahrenbach atinfo@dugongdivecenter.com.

Written by Gregg Yan

Extremely Rare and Historically Important Wood ​​Sculpture by Jose Rizal to be Auctioned​​​

Wazzup Pilipinas!

An oval bas-relief wood sculpture 39 inches long, 18 and a half inches wide and 2 and a half inches high, carved from a single piece of heavy wood, possibly narra, with a dark varnish or stain and made by Philippine National Hero Jose P. Rizal in Dapitan. This extremely rare and historically important artwork will be auctioned at the Leon Gallery on June 9, 2018.

It’s provenance stems from the family of Narcisa Rizal (1852 – 1939), the third sibling of the hero’s family. Narcisa and her daughter Angelica would be frequent visitors to Dapitan and, in fact, they would accompany him when he embarked to Manila at the end of his exile from that distant port.

By the end of the 19th century, “physical culture” or the need for exercise had become a European obsession, beginning first in Germany where it became not just an expression of the highest individual development but also as a symbol for nationalism. A nation was only as strong as its citizens’ health and as beautiful as their well-developed bodies.

Jose Rizal was an avid follower of all things Continental, his stay in Europe—in the shadow of the newly-built Eiffel Tower, for example, while in Paris—and its capitals made sure of that. He absorbed not only precepts of liberty, fraternity and equality but also their representations and methods employed to represent these.

Gaspar Vibal, publisher of rare Filipininanas “The Life, Times and Art of Damian Domingo” and “Flora Filipina”, theorizes that Rizal’s fascinating sculptures represents the national hero’s deliberate contradiction of the Filipino colonial archetypes.

Prior to this sculpture by Jose Rizal, Filipins had been represented as either indolent savages of prettified, emasculated townsfolk. Watercolors of these representations of half-naked tribesmen or ineffectual, over-dressed supernumeraries would circulate in Europe beginning in the latter half of the 19th century, culminating in the humiliating “Expocision General de las Yslas Filipinas de Madrid in 1887. It featured transplanted northern hillsmen dancing daily around carabaos in a backdrop of thatch huts. (Two or three of these Filipinos would, in fact perish, from pneumonia as a result.

It was the anti-thesis of everything Jose Rizal—or for that matter Juan Luna and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo—stood for. A proud Filipino equal to anybody in the world.

In 1890, he would write the incendiary essay “Sobre la Indolencia de los Filipinos” (On the Indolence of the Filipinos)—laziness as a result of the hot Philippine climate being a favorite put-down of the Spanish. It breathed fire and brimstone, and along with his novels, would account for his exile in Dapitan in 1892 for four long years until his execution.

Therefore, sometime during his exile between 1892 and 1896, Jose Rizal would create this unique and first prototype of the Filipino: virile, muscular and engaged in a highly civilized, European display of strength. The bas relief (or basso-relieve or low-relief) depicts a young man, half-dressed in fashionable gym clothes of the time, knee length pantaloons with a drawstring at the waist; holding aloft a barbell in a typical exercise stance. The figure’s legs are long and well-proportioned with strong calves; his arm muscles as well are well-defined. His upper torso shows off a tight abdomen and a solid chest.

In fact, a case may be made that this could be a self-portrait of the hero himself, as truly, the ‘First Filipino’, not only gifted and mentally acute but also an outstanding physical specimen. Jose Rizal, in profile, bears a striking resemblance to the athlete in the sculpture.

Leon Gallery Announces the Spectacular Mid-Year Auction 2018

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Leon Gallery has set the date for its much-awaited, scintillating Spectacular Mid-Year Auction 2018 on Saturday, June 9, 2018 at its Eurovilla I showrooms on the corner of Rufino Street and Legaspi Street, Legaspi Village in Makati.

Headlining the must-have masterpieces are an exquisite Lorenzo Guerrero of life along the Pasig River. Guerrero, who became most famous as the mentor of the brilliant and internationally-celebrated Juan Luna, was also a wonderful painter in his own right. He was educated by the foremost Spanish instructors at the Manila academia : Manuel de la Cortina, who was himself a graduate of the Madrid art academy and his successor Nicolas Valdez. Guerrero, in fact, was to become the teacher of Manila’s finest artists, from Simon de la Rosa Flores and his nephew Fabian de la Rosa, Felix Martinez and Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo, Telesforo Sucgang, Felix Pardo de Tavera, and Jorge Pineda to name a few stellar painters who passed through the portals of the legendary art school.

A 1917 work by one of Guerrero’s star pupils, Fabian de la Rosa, of a charming pair of ponies in a stableyard, provides an interesting behind-the-scenes look of a Manila home, at a time when horses were more common than automobiles.

Fernando Amorsolo — who happened to be Fabian de la Rosa’s nephew — is also in the spotlight with several riveting and early works : A post-war procession outside the ruins of the Antipolo church; works from the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, from an orange-streaked sunset scene by the water to glorious country scenes “Under the Mango Tree”  and by a waterfall. The works are all the collections of several distinguished Manila families. A rare urban scene of the massive Ynchausti Rope Factory is a unique view of Manila in the 1920s.

Scintillating Jose Joyas, one ante-dating his historic participation in the Venice Biennale (the Philippines’ first in that august art fair); others from his halcyon years in the 1970s. Other mid-century moderns include Vicente Manansala with a superb work dated 1949 that speaks allegorical almost in a style more typical of Carlos “Botong” Francisco : a trio of women pound rice, in a variety of Filipino costumes, while men pile grain in tall mountains. In the background, a sunlit landscape which suggests the Benguet rice terraces and in the foreground, a large carabao. Another work, datelined Paris, portrays a grieving mother at a child’s bier. Arturo Luz, Ang Kiukok, and Romeo Tabuena are likewise represented, as are Juvenal Sanso, Oscar Zalameda, Lao Lianben, Malang, and Federico Aguilar Alcuaz.

A finely-proportioned ‘comoda’ with original marquetry in a floral design, an imposing Sheraton sideboard, and a ‘Mariposa’ butterfly sofa are just some of the impressive furniture to be included in the June sale.

Among the collectible memorabilia, the country’s most iconic heroes are represented. There is a bread-and-butter note (dated 1891) from the Philippine National Hero Jose Rizal to the Scottish millionaire Don Alejandro S. Macleod who had thrived in Manila. Letters from various historical personalities to Teodora Alonso are also available in a single lot, including a Rizal family recipe, and more piquantly, the court documents of the suit brought against Rizal’s mother and her brother. Her unjust persecution greatly influenced Rizal’s nationalism.

Most explosive is the narration of Gregoria de Jesus of the last days of Andres Bonifacio as well as a dagger bearing the markings of the Katipunan. This document, while having been featured in works on the Philippine Revolution has never been revealed in full previously and is certainly one of a kind. A rare autographed photograph of the Lakambini of the KKK (dedicated to the journalist Jose P. Santos) and a letter to Emilio Jacinto complete the historical offerings that will fascinate the collector and every patriot.

Apropos, a BenCab of Rizal’s last days in Fort Santiago — and featuring excerpts of his “Ultimo Adios” is also a highlight, alongside an appealing work from his “Larawan” series, inspired by turn-of-the-century Philippine photographs. From the contemporary artists, exciting works by Ronald Ventura, Marcel Antonio, Jon Jaylo, Danilo Dalena, Emmanuel Garibay, Edwin Wilwayco, Manuel Ocampo (with a grim Christmas work) and Jose John Santos III are also featured. The Santos work echoes the themes in the rest of the auction of women of the Philippine Revolution : The painting juxtaposes ladies in traditional Filipino wear with Cretan friezes, a view of a bahay na bato through an archway, and a fragment of an antique door.