Tubbataha marks 30 by celebrating its Big Five—both species and supporters

Today, Aug. 11, it will be 30 years since President Corazon Aquino signed Proclamation No. 306, creating the Philippines’ first national marine protected area (MPA), the Tubbataha Reefs National Marine Park—now the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park (TRNP)—in 1988. The proclamation turned this jewel among Philippine reefs—all 97,000-plus hectares of it in the middle of the Sulu Sea in Palawan—into a “no-take zone,” legally protecting this important center of marine biodiversity of the country as well as the world. In 1993, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) reaffirmed this by declaring Tubbataha the only purely marine World Heritage Site in Southeast Asia.