Rich seas
The full extent of the Philippines’ marine biodiversity is not known, but the best information available reveals an astounding variety of marine life: 5,000 species of clams, snails and mollusks (Springsteen and Leobrera 1986); 488 species of corals (Nemenzo 1981); 981 species of bottom-living algae (Silva et al 1987), and thousands of other organisms. Five of the seven sea turtle species known to exist in the world today occur in Philippine waters.
The lists are likely to grow, as new surveys discover new species. In 1953, Herre recorded 1,815 marine fish species (out of a total of 2,145 fish species) in the Philippines; today, about 2,824 marine fish species are listed for the Philippines at FishBase (February 2006), including 33 endemic (one of which is endangered), 1,729 reef-associated, 169 pelagic, and 336 deepwater species.
In 2004, a survey in Panglao, Bohol observed 1,200 decapod crustaceans or different species of crabs and shrimps; some 6,000 mollusk species, including sea slugs and microshells; and hundreds of other previously unrecorded marine species.
The survey also found fossils of snails extinct in other parts of the world, and numerous species that were photographed alive for the first time.
Another survey was conducted in 2005 under the same project in the deep waters (up to 2,200 meters) of the Bohol-Mindanao-Cebu triangle. It recorded some 1,000 mollusk species, 600 crustacean species, more than 100 echinoderm species, and over 100 fish species, many of them considered rare or very rare, or new to science.
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