By Kenneth Marcos 
Before sunrise in the coastal villages of Tawi-Tawi, fishers wade through shallow waters guided not by textbooks, but by knowledge passed down through generations. These everyday observations, often overlooked, have now gained global recognition through science.
Dr. Mudjekeewis D. Santos of the Department of Agriculture–National Fisheries Research and Development Institute (DA-NFRDI) is among the authors of a new international research article highlighting the ecological knowledge of coastal communities in Tawi-Tawi on horseshoe crabs. The study was published in February 2026 in the journal Regional Studies in Marine Science, Volume 94.
The research, titled “Coastal people’s local ecological knowledge on horseshoe crabs from Tawi-Tawi, Philippines: Implications for conservation,” focuses on how local fishers understand the behavior, habitat, and seasonal patterns of horseshoe crabs. These insights, gathered through years of lived experience, offer valuable information that can help protect the species and manage coastal resources more effectively.
Horseshoe crabs are ancient marine animals that have existed for hundreds of millions of years. They play an important role in coastal ecosystems and are also valuable to science and medicine. However, like many marine species in the Philippines, they face threats from overharvesting, habitat loss, and climate change.
The study emphasizes that conservation efforts are stronger when they include local communities. In Tawi-Tawi, residents know where horseshoe crabs breed, when they appear in large numbers, and how environmental changes affect them. This local ecological knowledge can help scientists and policy makers design conservation programs that are practical and respectful of community livelihoods.
Dr. Santos and his co-authors highlighted that ignoring local knowledge can lead to policies that are difficult to enforce or harmful to coastal families who depend on marine resources for food and income. By working with communities, conservation measures become more effective and sustainable in the long term.
The publication also supports a growing movement in fisheries and environmental science that values indigenous and local knowledge alongside modern research methods. For a country like the Philippines, with more than 36,000 kilometers of coastline, this approach is especially important.
DA-NFRDI plays a key role in providing science-based advice to support fisheries management, food security, and marine conservation. Research like this helps ensure that policies are grounded in real conditions faced by fishers and coastal communities, particularly in remote areas such as the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
The recognition of Dr. Santos’ work brings attention not only to Filipino scientists, but also to the voices of coastal people whose knowledge is often undocumented. It shows that solutions to environmental problems can come from listening to communities who live closest to nature.
As climate change and overfishing continue to pressure marine ecosystems, studies like this remind us that protecting the sea is a shared responsibility. Combining science with community wisdom may be one of the strongest tools the country has to protect its marine life for future generations.
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