MANA Mo? Sea is part of package

MANA Mo? What’s that?

If you’re hearing it for the first time, you might think someone is asking you what you’re going to inherit. A house? Perhaps a family business? Or even a debt? Well, the answer is no, but in a way yes.

It’s because if you are Filipino, congratulations! You’ve inherited something much bigger: a paradise, an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands.

Ironic, isn’t it? Sometimes we think only of the three major islands — Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao — that we tend to forget that the sea is part of the family, you know, like when our eyes see our noses but it gets blurred when we focus on other things? Yes, something like that but much bigger and it comes with more responsibility.

I bet lately you’ve been seeing more maritime content with the sea awareness videos, seafarers conventions, maritime fora, coastal cleanups, port educational tours, and other activities. Well, congratulations! MANA Mo might actually be working. September was MANA Mo month, so what exactly is it???

Every year, the month of September is celebrated as the Maritime and Archipelagic Nation Awareness Month, or MANA Mo, by virtue of Presidential Proclamation No. 316 signed in 2017.

MANA Mo encourages all Filipinos, most especially the government agencies, national and local, to contribute to raising awareness about maritime and archipelagic issues, hence the acronym.

Yes, these waters form part of our highways, just not the traditional roads but much greater.

They carry food, fuel, passengers, tourists, cargo, and livelihoods, and connect us to the lands beyond our shores. In simple terms: the sea is not the space between our islands, but the thread that connects our whole country.

This year, the maritime agencies — from the Philippine Coast Guard, Marina, and of course the Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) — took the celebration beyond conference rooms and into actual port and coastal communities.

Imagine 600 kilograms of trash collected on 19 September as PPA personnel and stakeholders joined the International Coastal Cleanup at Baseco Beach, Dolomite Beach, Seaside by the Bay, Mall of Asia, the Las Piñas-Parañaque Wetland Park, and other coastal areas.

Sometimes it’s the simplest solution of bending down and picking up the plastic bottle someone casually threw away.

On 21 September, ships were finally talking as they were dressed for the occasion, and their horns sounded simultaneously for three minutes in observance of National Maritime Week and National Seafarers Day, back-to-back with the 22 September blood drive headed by the PPA at the Eva Macapagal Super Terminal at Pier 15, South Harbor.

A forum on gender equality in the maritime sector brought together female workers in ships, ports, and other male-dominated jobs to share their experiences as women leaders in the maritime sector.

There was also a little music for the people who spend so much of their lives at sea. “Harana Para sa Marino” on 23 September featured the Philippine Coast Guard Harmonic Band and the PPA Chorale in a tribute to Filipino seafarers. It was touching and well deserved.

But while we celebrated the people of the maritime sector, we also had to talk about something that concerns the industry’s future.

How do we make our ports greener? The International Workshop on Port, Shipping and People: Safety and Competencies in the Decarbonization Era brought together local and international stakeholders to discuss safety, workforce competencies, training, technology, and the realities of decarbonization.

The PPA presented its environmental initiatives, including the PPA Port Environment Code or “Green Code,” Green Port programs and the Green Port Award System. Digitalization was also part of the conversation to help boost environmental performance, improve operations, and make ports more efficient.

This is consistent with PPA general manager Jay Santiago’s vision of modernizing Philippine ports and bringing their facilities and services up to global best practices, while strengthening sustainability, innovation and connectivity.

The port may not appear in any of those stories, but it’s quietly doing its job keeping it all together for the waters and islands to work, like a binder. In an archipelago, sometimes the road is the water and that road needs ports. When ports work efficiently, we sometimes don’t notice them at all.

MANA Mo month ended with a blue lighting ceremony. PPA facilities nationwide were illuminated in blue for World Maritime Day 2026, symbolizing solidarity with the global maritime community and recognizing ports’ role in safe, efficient, and sustainable travel and trade.

Finally, Marina passed the torch to the Philippine Coast Guard, which will host next year’s National Maritime Week celebration.

It was a packed schedule for September and while the blue lights have been turned off and the forums came to an end, we hope the awareness stays. That is the challenge of MANA Mo — how to make maritime awareness last longer than the month of September. Perhaps, we can start with the way we view our seas.

So MANA Mo? Yes, mana natin lahat (of all of us) because being a Filipino in an archipelago means we’ve inherited more than land. Our seas, our responsibility.