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Range overlap patterns were observed in a dataset of 10,446 expert-derived marine species distribution maps, including 8,295 coastal fishes, 1,212 invertebrates (crustaceans and molluscs), 820 reef-building corals, 50 seagrasses, and 69 mangroves. Distributions of tropical Indo-Pacific shore fishes revealed a concentration of species richness in the northern apex and central region of the Coral Triangle epicenter of marine biodiversity. This pattern was supported by distributions of invertebrates and habitat-forming primary producers. Habitat availability, heterogeneity, and sea surface temperatures were highly correlated with species richness across spatial grains ranging from 23,000 to 5,100,000 km² with and without correction for autocorrelation. The consistent retention of habitat variables in our predictive models supports the area of refuge hypothesis which posits reduced extinction rates in the Coral Triangle. This does not preclude support for a center of origin hypothesis that suggests increased speciation in the region may contribute to species richness. In addition, consistent retention of sea surface temperatures in models suggests that available kinetic energy may also be an important factor in shaping patterns of marine species richness. Kinetic energy may hasten rates of both extinction and speciation. The position of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool to the east of the Coral Triangle in central Oceania and a pattern of increasing species richness from this region into the central and northern parts of the Coral Triangle suggests peripheral speciation with enhanced survival in the cooler parts of the Coral Triangle that also have highly concentrated available habitat. These results indicate that conservation of habitat availability and heterogeneity is important to reduce extinction of marine species and that changes in sea surface temperatures may influence the evolutionary potential of the region.

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Live reef food fish (LRFF) fishing is one of the most important livelihoods for the people of the coastal and small island communities within the Spermonde Archipelago in South Sulawesi Province of Indonesia. However, LRFF fishing and trade is considered a threat to the reef ecosystem due to over-fishing and the use of cyanide as a method of increasing the LRFF catch. This paper examines the effectiveness of a development and conservation effort known as COREMAP (Coral Reef Rehabilitation and Management Project), which was funded by loans and grants from various international financial institutions and overseas development agencies that aim to protect, rehabilitate, and sustain the utilization of coral reefs and their associated ecosystems in Indonesia. In this paper, COREMAP is examined in order to answer the main research question, “Has the lack of understanding of the socio-economics of the LRFF fishing and trade been a factor in the shortcomings of COREMAP to protect, rehabilitate, and sustain the utilization of coral reefs and their associated ecosystem in Indonesia?” This paper demonstrates that the achievement of COREMAP’s goals has been hindered by COREMAP’s inability to incorporate commoditization processes characterized by profit accumulation in the hands of a few actors and by the persistence of debts structure through the existing LRFF fishing and trade networks into COREMAP’s strategies and policies. Moreover, this paper also demonstrates that COREMAP’s organizational structures have not been able to challenge the practices of corruption which maintain cyanide fishing practices, characterized by the existing LRFF prosecution insurance network. This paper concludes that the inability of COREMAP to clearly address the issues of profit accumulation and debts as well as to challenge the practice of corruption have led to shortcomings in the achievement of COREMAP’s conservation and development goals. The case of managing reef fishery in Indonesia provides valuable lessons for countries with abundant reef ecosystem and for international development agencies which support the conservation and development of coastal areas.

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This paper considers the question of whether legal standing may be accorded to a person, acting for himself/herself and on behalf of certain highly migratory marine species that are listed as endangered, to file a public action for prohibitory injunction against offshore seismic surveys and exploration drillings harmful to their health and habitat. Such is the novel question confronting the Philippine Supreme Court in the pending case Resident Marine Mammals of Tañon Strait Protected Seascape v. Secretary of Energy.1
Standing to file a public action for prohibitory injunction (public action) to restrain harm to a natural resource per se such as the wildlife is determined by the legal regime governing the resource. In the Philippines jura regalia is the prevailing regime according to which all natural resources found within Philippine territory, such as highly migratory marine species that enter internal waters, are subject to the dominium of the State, although available for free and open access by Filipino citizens. If harm is inflicted on these marine species the State alone, in exercise of its dominium, has legal standing to bring suit to stop the harm. If the harm is brought about by an action or inaction of the State, no person has legal standing to bring suit to stop it except one who can show that on the occasion of the harm one sustained or will sustain a direct injury-in-fact to one‟s person or property. However, in specific Philippine coastal communities two developments spurred the emergence of an alternative resource regime to jura regalia. Governance of marine resources was devolved and decentralized by the State to the local governments and communities. This enabled communities to a) designate and manage marine protected areas (MPA); b) generate norms of behavior to sustain their MPA; and c) adopt and enforce ordinances that reflect these norms. Moreover, the State expressly recognized the protected status of highly migratory marine species (hereinafter “marine species”) listed under Annex 1 of the UNCLOS while they are in Philippine waters and delegated to the communities authority to enforce such protection. Adapting to the protected status of the marine species, communities in the MPA modified their norms of behavior from one of commercial exploitation of the marine species in an open access regime to one of preservation of the same marine species by declaring their habitats “no-take zones”. Such alternative resource regime is centered on the communities‟ responsibility to rather than economic rights or interests in the marine species. This responsibility to protect is the platform on which MPA communities can take a stand in a public action to stop an environmental harm to the marine species.
The main purposes of this paper is to determine whether the emergence of MPA as an alternative resource regime warrants liberalization by the courts of the rules on legal standing so as to allow communities that have adopted MPA as an alternative resource regime to articulate and defend their formative environmental norms on the protection of the marine species. Subsumed to this purpose is a tentative inquiry into whether underlying such norm is a concept of respect for the intrinsic value of the marine species – that they have a right to life independent of their usefulness to man - which could become the basis of legal standing of the marine species themselves.

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