“Saving The Endangered Tawilis” – So, Where Is The Tawilis?
Very strange. A Facebookpost and a Manila Bulletin both claim that “the world’s only freshwater sardine… has been successfully reared alive… from its natural location,” which is the Taal Volcano. But not a single fish is shown!
(Manila Bulletin image above)
I say, as a communicator for development in Agriculture and related fields, a news report like that shows any or both of the following:
(1) That journalism itself is being endangered!
(2) That fish research itself is in question!
I take this to be a sad instance of science journalism making an unprecedented claim but not providing proof of its authenticity.
This is from the Facebook post of UPLB Office of Alumni Relations I saw 06 March 2021:
The Department of Science and Technology (DoST) has announced that the world’s only freshwater sardine (that) can only be found in Taal Lake has been successfully reared off site or away from its natural location. DoST Secretary Fortunato “Boy” T De La Peña said it was the Limnological Station of the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB-LS), headed by Dr Ma Vivian C Camacho, that achieved (this) major breakthrough in tawilis research last 23 Feb 2021.
Also on 06 March 2021 and on the same science study, the Manila Bulletin publishes Charissa Luci-Atienza’s news story, “Saving The Endangered Tawilis[1].” Ms Charissa announces “Good news for lovers of crispy tawilis” and says Mr De La Peña has declared:
The team has successfully kept Sardinella tawilis, locally known as tawilis, alive for several weeks in captivity at UPLB-LS in Los Baños, Laguna, away from Taal Lake, where it is known to be endemic.
Unfortunately – Neither report shows any fish either swimming in water or lying on the table. Neither a single photograph nor video. You report success without evidence – that is an empty boast, especially that this is breakthrough science, if true!
For me, a self-styled journalist in the last 45 years, these two incidents of unsubstantiated journalism dealing with the same news source are unforgivable. I blame neither the UPLB Office of Alumni Relations (OAR) nor the Manila Bulletin; instead, I blame the journalists themselves, the ones who wrote the Facebook item for the OAR and Ms Charissa:
Claiming without showing evidence is unintended but this is an intellectual insult to the readers!
Whether you are a scientist or not, science should neither be taken lightly, nor incompletely reported.
With journalistic consciousness actively at work, in this case, a Facebook message or an email would have generated the missing fishes (pun intended) – and science would have been served right! (If not the precious, delicious, tawilis.)
Mr De La Peña said the research was “to save tawilis from possible extinction should there be a massive eruption.” He explained:
This fish is found only in Taal Lake and nowhere else in the world and (was) declared as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in January 2019.
And I journalist say journalism is an endangered species itself if journalists do not support their news claims!@517
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