Angelique M. Songco
Protected Area Superintendent, Tubbataha Reefs
Protected Area Superintendent, Tubbataha Reefs
After serving in the Armed Forces of the Philippines for five years, Angelique Songco worked as a scuba diving instructor in the dive shop she owns with her partner of almost 40 years. She worked as a diving professional on liveaboards in the Tubbataha Reefs for over ten years.
With like-minded individuals she helped establish a local environmental non-government organization for the purpose of supporting the conservation of Tubbataha. She represented the NGO on the Tubbataha Protected Area Management Board, the policy-making body for the park. The Board hired her as park manager in 2001.
Songco attained a master’s degree in Environment, Development and Policy from the University of Sussex, England. She has been named Hero of the Environment by WWF-Philippines twice. Under her leadership, Tubbataha won the Platinum Global Ocean Refuge Award and was named one of the three best-managed large no-take marine-protected areas in the world. She was also awarded the KfW-Bernhard-Grzimek-Preis 2019 for her work in biodiversity conservation.
Although her official designation is Protected Area Superintendent, she is better known as Mama Ranger of Tubbataha. She is a mother of two.
CEO and founder, The Ocean Data Alliance and Pre-Vetted Digital Transformation Crisis Consultant, UNDP
Ocean Physical Modelling Program Manager, ARGANS France, and Senior Earth Observation Scientist, ICM-CSIC
Officer in Charge/Head of the Department of Environment and Climate Change, Indian Ocean Commission
Head of Department Marine Zoology, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt
Postdoctoral Researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego
Oceanic Volcanism – Research Division “Dynamics of the Ocean Floor”, GEOMAR - Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel
Professor in Oceanography, Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología (ICML) UNAM
Head of Department of Life Sciences, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago
Project Manager of “FACE-IT” at the Department of Marine Botany, University of Bremen, Germany
Director of State Key Lab. of Marine Pollution, Chair Professor of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry, City University of Hong Kong
Clara Manno, Pelagic Marine Ecologist at BAS and co chair, SCAR Plastic in the Polar Environments Working Group
Chair, PAME, the Arctic Council’s work on Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment
Research Scientist, Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt
Head of “Provision for the Future – Basic Research and Research for Sustainable Development”, BMBF
Science Director, REV Ocean, and Senior Research Fellow, Somerville College, University of Oxford
Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO
Postdoctoral researcher, Utrecht University & Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology
Chair, United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection