By Gerry T. Estrera
If you love eating “lapu-lapu,” “mameng” and other reef fishes, you better watch out. Those fish may be tasty but they may not be healthy to eat all. The reason: they may be loaded with cyanide.
“Cyanide fishing may not be as rampant as in the 1970s and 1980s, it is still being done in the Philippines,” said Dr. Alan White, who used to be the chief of party of the Coastal Resource Management Project in Central Visayas. He now serves as senior scientist based in Hawaii of the Asia-Pacific Program of the Nature Conservancy.
“I believe that most cyanide used presently is for food fish and it is difficult to know how wide spread its use is,” Dr. White pointed out. “It is still a major problem in Palawan and other areas where the live food fish trade is important.”
Cyanide fishing is not a Filipino discovery but an American ingenuity. A certain Bridges first used sodium cyanide to stun and capture tropical fish in 1958 in Illinois. A Filipino aquarium fish collector picked up the practice.
The practice spread throughout the country in no time. At that time, reef fish were collected for the fish aquarium trade and exported to the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France.
The Philippines is home to 70 percent 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.
Today, cyanide fishing is no longer confined to gathering aquarium fish. The demand for live fish from the reefs in restaurants in Beijing, southern China, Hong Kong, and other countries where Chinese abound has made the practice prevalent not only in the Philippines but other Asian countries as well.
The reason for its popularity among poverty-stricken fishermen: money. Michael Fabinyi, a researcher with Australia’s James Cook University who studied the live reef fish trade in Palawan province for several years, cites the case of leopard coral grouper.
“From approximately 50 cents per kilo in the late ’80s when the trade began,” he explained, “the price of leopard coral grouper has risen gradually and consistently. In 2011, a good-sized leopard coral grouper in good condition fetches a price of between 700 pesos and 1,000 pesos per kilo for fishermen.”
“The total retail value of the live reef food fish was around $350 million per year from 1997 to 2001,” notes Andrew Bruckner, an American coral reef ecologist who works closely with government and nongovernment groups in the United States. “By 2002, it increased to about $486 million for Hong Kong and $810 million for the entire trade. Individual fish can sell for up to $180 per kilogram, depending on species, taste, texture, availability and time of year.”
It may be easier to catch reef fishes using cyanide but it has a price. “Cyanide is a deadly poison not only to people and fish, but also to other marine animals like corals,” says Dr. Rafael D. Guerrero, a national scientist who used to head the Philippine Council for Aquatic and Marine Research and Development.
Corals are fragile creatures that host microscopic organisms on which larger creatures feed and provide shelter for a variety of marine life like fish, lobsters, octopi, eels, and turtles.
To catch elusive fish hiding in coral reefs, fishermen use cyanide, which is illegal. A study commissioned by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources in 1982 established that two applications of cyanide on coral reefs four months apart caused high coral polyp mortality. “Unlike blast fishing, which reduces corals into rubble,” deplores marine scientist Vaughan R. Pratt, “cyanide keeps coral structures intact, but dead.”
The Philippines has around 26,000 square kilometers of coral reef area, the second largest in Southeast Asia. Some 500 species of stony corals are known to occur, 12 of which are considered endemic.
Today, poor coral cover is found in 40 percent of the country’s reefs, while areas with excellent cover have steadily declined to less than 5 percent from 2000 to 2004. “Despite considerable improvements in coral reef management, the country’s coral reefs remain under threat,” said Dr. Theresa Mundita S. Lim, the director of the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau.
Fifty percent 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.
Researchers estimate that more than a million kilograms of cyanide have been squirted onto Philippine reefs alone over the last half century.
“(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.”
Some believe that banning the export of live reef fish is one possible solution to the problem. Davao City Councilor Leonardo Avila III thinks otherwise. “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 says.
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