Manong Berto places a puck-sized lump of cyanide in the bottom of a squeeze bottle. He fills it with water, the spray the contents on a coral reef. Then, he scoops up the gasping fish as they come rushing out of their holes.
This is how most tropical fish commence the journey to home aquariums throughout the world. For years, sodium cyanide has played a major role in supplying the multibillion-dollar global market for fish.
“Cyanide fishing may not be as rampant as in the 1970s and 1980s, it is being done in the Philippines,” says Dr. Alan White, senior scientist of the Asia-Pacific Program of the Nature Conservancy.
But still about 150,000 kilograms of sodium cyanide are sold every year in the Philippines, according to Dennis Calvan, executive director of NGOs (non-government organizations) for Fisheries Reform, quoting data from the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources.
In the past, cyanide fishing was practiced to capture live fish for sale primarily to European and North American aquarium owners. The Philippines is home to 70% of the world’s ornamental fish. According to a study done in 1981, some 200 of the 2,177 tropical fish species found in the country are exported.
In recent years, however, cyanide fishing is no longer confined to gathering aquarium fish. The demand for live fish in restaurants in Hong Kong and other parts of the world has made the practice prevalent in Indonesia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, the Maldives, the Solomon Islands, and other coastal states in the Western Pacific.
The Washington, D.C.-based World Resources Institute (WRI) calls the practice of serving live fish prepared on the spot for dinner as “an essential status symbol for major celebrations and business occasions.”
“Some 20,000 tons of live fish are eaten annually in the restaurants of Hong Kong, where rich sophisticates will pay big bucks to select a huge grouper fish in a tank and have it cooked for their table,” reports Fred Pearce in an article which was carried by the website of World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
According to Pearce, a Filipino fisherman will get between P300 and P1,100 for a top-price live coral trout, which is five times the price of a dead fish. “This makes live reef fishing very attractive,” he wrote.
Yes, money is the reason for the popularity of cyanide fishing among cash-strapped fishermen. “Fishermen can sell live fish to exporters for many times the price of dead fish,” explains the Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) based in Berkeley, California. “The exporters then turn around and demand five times the price they paid for the fish by selling them to foreign luxury live fish markets in Asia.”
Fish coming from the Philippines are preferred by many Hong Kong gourmands because “Philippines fish have the best taste,” they claim.
Because of the huge demand, many fishermen have no choice but to use cyanide. It takes a fisherman one whole day to catch 2 decent-sized fish using a hook and line. But with cyanide, he can catch more than a dozen.
“I believe that most cyanide used presently is for food fish and it is difficult to know how wide spread its use is with better first-hand knowledge,” says Dr. White. “It is still a major problem in Palawan and other areas where the live food fish trade is important.”
While cyanide fishing is economically feasible, it is environmentally destructive. It kills coral reefs, the “rainforests of the sea.”
The late Jacques-Yves Cousteau commented after visiting a coastal island in the northern Philippines to examine reefs destroyed by cyanide fishing: “These practices are criminal. They attack the natural productive environment which allows the renewal of marine resources.”
A study commissioned by the Philippine fishery bureau showed that two applications of cyanide on coral heads four month apart can cause high coral polyp mortality. “Unlike blast fishing which reduces corals into rubble,” observes Dr. Vaughan Pratt of the International Marinelife Alliance, “cyanide keeps coral structure intact — but dead.”
Contrary to common belief, cyanide fishing is not a Filipino ingenuity but an American one. A certain Bridges first used sodium cyanide to stun and capture tropical fish in 1958 in Illinois. A Filipino aquarium fish collector named Gonzales picked up the practice.
By 1962, American fish exporter from the Philippines Earl Kennedy was surprised by a sudden increase in aquarium fish supply from Lubang Island off Batangas. He found out later that this was due to cyanide use. The practice spread throughout the country in no time.
Live fish being sold in the market is called the live reef fish food trade (LRFFT). “The total retail value of the LRFFT was around US$350 million per year from 1997 to 2001. By 2002, it increased to about $486 million for Hong Kong and US$810 million for the entire trade. Individual fish can sell for up to US$180 per kilogram, depending on species, taste, texture, availability and time of year,” reports Andrew Bruckner, an American coral reef ecologist with the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Studies have shown that 50% of the fish exposed to sodium cyanide die in the reef. The ones caught and later recover are transferred to clean water, but they are doomed to die within weeks or months because of the damage caused by the poison to their internal organs.
“Only 10% of the fish that get poisoned is of commercial value to exporters,” revealed Dr. Rafael D. Guerrero III, a fishery expert who formerly headed the Philippine Council for Aquatic and Marine Research and Development.
“Cyanide is a deadly poison that kills other fragile creatures living in coral reefs,” Dr. Guerrero added. Corals host microscopic organisms on which larger creatures feed and provide shelter for a variety of marine life like other kinds of fish, lobsters, octopi, eels, and turtles.
Even after the fishermen leave an area, the cyanide stays behind in the ocean current. According to marine biologists, it takes only a small amount to kill the sensitive coral. But corals are not the only ones affected: fishermen themselves are not spared.
Although the chemical cannot kill them, frequent exposure to cyanide can result in skin lesions, fatigue, reddened hair, and damage to internal organs.
(Cyanide fishing) is illegal, so people should just stop doing it,” says Dr. Arnel “AA” Yaptinchay, director of the Marine Wildlife Watch of the Philippines. “There may be short term gains now but we have to really think the serious repercussions for the future generation. Remember this: no reef, no fish.”
Dr. White gives this idea: “Solutions pertain mostly to education, law enforcement and incentives for clean fish. Fish testing is a way to determine the use of cyanide and then those holding cyanide caught fish should be fined. Access to cyanide products need to be limited since most of the cyanide is illegally purchased within the Philippines or stolen from the pharmaceutical companies that use it or from the gold mining companies since it is used in mining operations.”
Some believe that banning the export of live reef fish is one possible solution to the problem. Davao City Councilor Leonardo Avila III, when he was still alive, begged to disagree. “As long as there are Chinese/Filipino restaurants willing to buy at a good price for live fish, and customers willing to pay for it, there will always be cyanide fishing,” he said. (Next: Deforestation)
