Although the world, because of international media emphasis seems to see only “freedom of navigation” as the crucial issue on the South China Sea disputes, buried underneath all the occasional political noise on the militarization of the islands and illegal conversion and reclamation of reefs and shoals are gut issues of human and ecological survival. This consists of the little known fact that the Spratlys are the savings bank for important fish and invertebrates that supply our coastal waters with marine life, feeding us and our neighbors and protecting the ecological balance of our common marine environment. The giant clams, harvested from the Spratlys by destroying corals to get to them using propellers, were discovered in Tanmen by a Taiwanese entrepreneur who had prospered from the business of producing beads and handicraft from seashells. The businessman, Zhan Dexiong, then set up factories in Tanmen to produce objet d’art from carvings made from the giant clams.

Abesamis, T. S. (2017, January 4). Colonizing the Spratlys, destroying our food and ecological balance. BusinessWorld, pp. SI/6, SI/7.