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Editor’s
mutterings
In the past year the environmental
problems generated by the live reef fish trade have received wide
media coverage, with major articles in, for example, the New York
Times, TIME, and New Scientist, as well as solid
TV coverage by CNN and various national and regional stations. Several
television documentaries on the subject are also being prepared. This
publicity is clearly helping to generate accelerating efforts to combat
the problem.
Until recently the Philippines
was the only country that paid serious attention to the issue. But
a number of other countries, most notably Hong Kong and Indonesia,
have woken up to the problem within the past year. This issue of the
Information Bulletin includes a summary of the actions initiated
by Hong Kong in response.
***
A variety of environmental NGOs
is also generating new or expanded programmes in order combat the
problem. This issue of the Information Bulletin carries articles on
some of these plans, by The Nature Conservancy, the Word Wildlife
Fund for Nature, with more to come in future issues.
It is too early to judge the effectiveness
of these new initiatives. It is too early, in fact, even to assume
that the problem can be licked. One of the biggest stumbling blocks
in some of the main countries involved is the widespread corruption
among the military, police, government officials and politicians,
some of whom actually engage in the trade or take bribes from those
who do. Environmental law enforcement desperately needs upgrading
throughout the region for reasons of which cyanide fishing is only
one of many.
***
As described in this issue by
Yvonne Sadovy, efforts are currently being made to get the
humphead wrasse, Cheilinus undulatus, listed on CITES as a
means of helping to halt its reportedly drastic decline in South-east
Asian waters and beyond. One of the problems facing proposals to list
it, is the dearth of information on its general biology and the status
of various stocks–despite its being the second largest coral
reef fish in the world, the most expensive of all live reef food fishes,
a very popular fish with recreational divers (a coral-reef candidate
for ‘charismatic megafauna’ status?), and an exceptionally
fine food fish.
How can this be when the literature
is full of papers on tiny, often territorial, often demersal egg-laying,
and in general atypical and commercially insignificant reef fish?
Why do they continue to receive so much attention from reef fish biologists,
when the biology of many commercially important species of groupers,
snappers, emperors, jacks, as well as the humphead wrasse, remain
almost unknown?
Damselfish are far and away the
most studied of all reef fishes. Could it be because convenience usually
triumphs over relevance? Surely, in these days of shrinking budgets
and fast-expanding ecological threats to the world’s coral reef
communities, it is time to put work aside on the ‘toy poodles’
of the reef and get serious about the species most endangered by overexploitation.
***
Reef-fish stock enhancement is
a natural extension of aquaculture of reef fish for marketing, and
grouper stock enhancement provides a potential means of countering
some of the pressure brought to bear on wild fish stocks by cyanide
fishing. Grouper stock enhancement is currently being carried out
in Okinawa and Bahrain. We have decided to expand the ambit of this
information bulletin to include this subject, starting in the next
issue with an article by Roger Uwate on grouper stock enhancement
in Bahrain. Other contributions on this subject are welcomed.
***
I’ve been preaching for years
that marine biologists would learn a lot if they spent more time listening
to fishers. Two groups of fishers I have come into contact with recently
while investigating live reef fisheries are aquarium fish collectors
and collectors of wild juvenile groupers for growout.
I will include a description of
some of what can be learned from the latter in a later issue of this
bulletin. Let me just give one illustration here of the valuable information
available from aquarium collectors.
There are at least three groups
of marine aquarium fish, I am told, that have proven so susceptible
to cyanide that they are rarely collected using it since they almost
invariably die. These are members of the genera Nemateolotris
(dartfish), Synchiropus (dragonets or mandarin fish), and Pseudochromis
(dottybacks).
On the other hand, angelfish,
especially the large ones, e.g. Pomacanthus, are usually caught
with cyanide–otherwise they go so far back into holes in the
reef when chased that it is very difficult to net them. (One Australian
aquarium fish collector told me of a technique for forcing them out
of the holes without using cyanide or breaking corals, but it would
not be fair to divulge his method).
Such information might be useful
for those responsible for monitoring shipments of aquarium fish for
cyanide traces; if my informants are correct, shipments dominated
by the latter group of fish are much more likely than those of the
former to have been caught with cyanide.
***
It’s nice to know they really
care. Statement made on a Voice of America radio broadcast concerning
the live reef food-fish trade by reporter Max Ruston: ‘In Hong
Kong, representatives of the fishing companies are reluctant to discuss
the use of cyanide in their work. But one executive, who declined
to be named, admitted to its use, and said he is aware of the damage
it does to the environment. He said that because there is no alternative,
his company has no immediate plans to change methods.’
In a similar vein, TIME,
3 June 1996, reports in its four-page story on the live reef-fish
trade: ‘"We are traders and businessmen," asserts Yeung
Wei-sung, managing director of Wing Sang Sea Products, a major (Hong
Kong) importer. "We only buy the fish. We don’t care how
they are caught."’
Bob
Johannes
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