Source : International Herald Tribune, France, 24 Jan '07
By : AP
  

"It is very special," said the 45-year-old To, who had flown into the northwest coast of Borneo Island for a holiday featuring a chance to sample the rare delicacy. "These fish are so big and taste so good. I'll be telling my friends.

What To and a dozen other Hong Kong tourists didn't realize was that their appetite for live reef fish — a status symbol for the nouveau riche in increasingly affluent Greater China — has caused the population of these predators to crash around Asia as fishermen struggling to earn a living increasingly resort to cyanide and dynamite to bring in the valuable catch. Entire reef ecosystems, already endangered by pollution and global warming, are at risk.

A study released Wednesday about the trade in Malaysia, formerly home to some of Asia's most abundant coastal reefs, found that catches of some grouper species and the endangered Napoleon wrasse fell by as much as 99 percent from 1995 to 2003 — when the economies of the countries where such exotic fish are a delicacy underwent rapid growth.

"The removal of these large, predatory fish might upset the delicate balance of the coral reef ecosystem," said Helen Scales, who co-authored the study for the Swiss-based World Conservation Union, appearing in the online edition of Proceedings of The Royal Societies, a respected scientific journal.

"With all the threats the reefs already face, these fishing practices take us one step closer to losing these reefs," Scales said.

The study of daily fish catches and sales quantifies what conservationists have said for a decade — that hunger for live reef fish in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China is causing populations of wrasse, grouper and coral trout on coastal reefs to plummet in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea.

There is also a growing live reef fish trade off the coast of California, where everything from rockfish to eels are caught and sold, mostly in Asian restaurants up and down the West Coast, according to Scot Lucas of the California Department of Fish and Game.

But unlike in Asia, the trade is heavily regulated and fishermen are not known to use the same destructive methods.

The United Nations and the World Conservation Union released a report last year warning that human exploitation of the high seas was putting many of its resources on the verge of extinction.

It noted that 52 percent of global fish stocks are over harvested and that populations of the largest fish such as tuna, cod and swordfish declined by as much as 90 percent in the past century.

It also said destructive fishing practices — including bottom trawling and illegal longline fishing — and a rise in large industrial vessels have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of seabirds, turtles and other marine life.

"Well over 60 percent of the marine world and its rich diversity found beyond the limits of national jurisdiction is vulnerable and at increasing risk," Ibrahim Thaiw of the World Conservation Union said in a statement last year.

Reef fish — which are caught mostly by small fishermen who sometimes using cyanide to stun their catch — are prized mostly because they are cooked live. Traders are careful to ensure they arrive that way, packaging them in bags of water and placing them in white coolers for a trip that can transport them thousands of kilometers (miles) to seafood restaurants resembling aquariums.

Diners can pay as much as US$100 (€77) a kilogram (2.2 pounds). Business dinners and weddings in Hong Kong and other Asian cities routinely serve live reef fish alongside such delicacies as shark-fin soup in what has become known as "luxury wildlife."

"Most Hong Kong people now choose to eat grouper because of the firm flesh. It's tastier," said Ng Wai Lun, a restaurant owner in Hong Kong, which consumes the most reef fish of any city. "Farmed fish is less tasty and fresh."

The World Wide Fund for Nature's Annadel Cabanban, who studies the trade in Malaysia, agreed with the study's finding that the numbers of reef fish were on the decline due to increasing human demand.

She said destructive fishing practices in the past 10 years — namely explosives and the use of cyanide — are as much to blame for the decline as overfishing because they destroy crucial reef habitats, affecting reproduction.