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, now senior scientist of the Asia-Pacific Program of the Nature Conservancy based in Hawaii.
“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.
“The use of cyanide on coral reefs to capture aquarium fish – principally for export to the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France – was first documented in the early 1960s in the Philippines,” reports Andrew Bruckner, an American coral reef ecologist who works closely with government and nongovernment groups in the United States.
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.
“Cyanide fisheries expanded to the live reef food fisheries in the 1970s and over the next two decades it spread throughout Southeast Asia and into the Pacific Islands,” Bruckner says. “Cyanide fishing has been confirmed in 15 countries.”
Although cyanide fishing is illegal, still a lot of fishermen do so. The reason: 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 fishers.”
Sixty percent of those live reef fish are imported into Hong Kong and the remainder destined for China, Taiwan, Japan and other Asian markets. In Hong Kong, the annual trade in reef fish is worth US$1 billion. “It is easy in Hong Kong to see large tanks of reef fish,” Prof. Yvonne Sadovy, of the University of Hong Kong says. “Hong Kong is the center of this type of trade.”
According to Bruckner, the total retail value of the live reef food fish was around $350 million per year from 1997 to 2001. “By 2002, it increased to about $486 million for Hong Kong and $810 million for the entire trade,” he says. “Individual fish can sell for up to $180 per kilogram, depending on species, taste, texture, availability and time of year.”
To capture these highly-priced reef fish, Filipino fishermen use sodium cyanide, a salt-like broad spectrum poison which has found worldwide application in fumigating, electroplating and mining industries.
“You place a puck-sized lump of cyanide in the bottom of a squeeze bottle,” Nong Mario, a fisherman from Davao, explained. “You fill it with water and then spray the contents on a coral reef. Then you scoop up the gasping fish as they come rushing out of their holes.”
Cyanide fishing is harmful, because it 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.
Researchers estimate that more than a million kilograms of cyanide have been squirted onto Philippine reefs alone over the last half century. A study commissioned by the Bureau of Fisheries & 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.”
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.
“The Philippines has 22,500 square kilometers of coral reef area, which represents 9 percent of the global total, making it the country with the third-largest reef area in the world (after Australia and Indonesia),” noted Reefs at Risk Revisited in the Coral Triangle.
The Philippines is home to 464 species of hard corals. But most of them are critically threatened. Coral reefs deemed to be in “poor” condition rose from 33 per cent in the 1980s to 40 per cent in the most recent estimates, according to Dr. Theresa Mundita Lim, director of the Protected Areas & Wildlife Bureau. Coral reefs that are in “excellent” condition also further reduced to one per cent from the already dismal statistics of five per cent in the 1980s.
“These practices are criminal,” commented Jacques-Yves Cousteau after visiting Palawan to examine reefs destroyed by cyanide fishing. “They attack the natural productive environment which allows the renewal of marine resources. Destroying coral today is destroying tomorrow’s fishes.”
Not all reef fish caught end up being eaten. “As many as 75 percent of fish collected with cyanide die within hours of collection, and another 30 percent of the survivors die prior to export. In addition, more than half of those fish exported may die shortly after arrival in the area of destination due to a combination of the poisons used in the capture and the stress associated with handling and transport,” reports Bruckner.
“(Cyanide fishing) is illegal, so people should just stop doing it,” urges 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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Author’s email: henrytacio@gmail.com
