Help keep them afloat. It is a plea befitting the thousands of Philippine fishermen who know no life away from the water.
And it’s the goal of one organization, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), to help provide them with the means to get back to sea and the technology to put more food on the table.
Among the millions deprived of their livelihoods when Typhoon Haiyan roared through the central Philippines last November, the impact has been particularly strong for the country’s fisherfolk, who rely on the very waters that destroyed their homes and boats to provide them with food and incomes.
Around 30,000 traditional Philippine outrigger boats, known as bancas, were demolished by the storm, according to Lorenzo Tan, the Philippine head of WWF, an international conservation group leveraging its annual Earth Hour campaign to support projects that help preserve the environment. He predicts that at least 140,000 people have been deprived of jobs as a result.
To help those families recover, the WWF is working to provide 600 new fiberglass boats to fisherfolk in Palawan and Leyte, two islands ravaged by Haiyan.
The organization has chosen fiberglass over wood, since fiberglass boats can be built within a day compared to the two weeks it takes to construct wooden ones.
The boats are also lightweight, which allows them to be moved easily from the shoreline to higher ground when storms approach, said Patrick Co, who is managing the WWF’s bancas project.
Holes and cracks are easy to repair using epoxy or fiberglass, he added. And by reducing fisherfolk’s reliance on hardwood, the fiberglass vessels eliminate the need to cut down trees.
The 15-foot outriggers will be paddle-powered by design since they are meant for subsistence fishermen, many of whom will be trained by the WWF to make the boats themselves using molds. Mr. Co said teaching them fiberglass boat-making technology could help give birth to a new industry in the area.
To raise funds for the project, Mr. Tan said the WWF plans to crowdsource support for the project by soliciting donations through the Internet.
It hopes to secure $24,000 to build the first 60 boats by March 29, when the WWF will hold its Earth Hour event, a voluntary action started in 2007 where participants worldwide switch off the lights for an hour. Each boat will cost $400 to build, with most of the money going to materials, tools and molds.
Twelve donors have already contributed $455.
This is more a source of protein (for fisherfolks) than profit, said Mr. Tan, who is also vice chairman of the local WWF. He said those who will be given the boats are artisanal fishermen who primarily rely on their catch for food and only sell what they don’t consume.
The Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources is also steadily moving toward its goal of building 10,000 wooden fishing boats for Haiyan survivors. Bureau director Asis Perez said around 4,000 boats have already been built, while most of the materials for the remainder have been delivered to the sites.
On Thursday Ms. Perez said at least 15,000 boats were still needed in the four regions hit by the storm.
Typhoon Haiyan is the deadliest storm ever recorded in the Philippines. It claimed at least 6,200 lives and displaced more than four million people. Even now, three months since the disaster struck, bodies continue to be uncovered and tens of thousands remain without homes.
2014 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.