Source : FIS Singapore, 11 Mar '09
By : FIS
  

Years of unregulated fishing, as well as a growing trend of targeting vulnerable spawning areas to feed the live reef fish trade, have pushed wild grouper stocks in Palawan province to the brink. High demand in Asia, particularly by high-end diners in places like Hong Kong, Singapore and mainland China has been mainly responsible for the excessive pressure on stocks.

	The squaretail coral grouper is one of the grouper species  considered threatened by the IUCN that is found in the Coral Triangle. (Photo: Stock File)

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently listed twenty grouper species as threatened with extinction, including the squaretail coral grouper and humpback grouper, which are found in the Coral Triangle and targeted commercially.

To help avoid the fishery's total collapse in Palawan, the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD), the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), the Palawan Provincial Government and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) held a sustainable live reef fish summit in the island province last month to help locals come up with their own sustainable management solutions, which include practical accreditation processes, quotas, levies, surveillance and monitoring systems.

At the summit held at Palawan's State University, fishermen and traders agreed to a more than 25 per cent cut in the annual Palawan grouper harvest, that is, from 700 metric tonnes to 516 metric tonnes. The initiative would roughly keep 1.5 million kilos of Coral Triangle grouper in the sea every year, Science Centric reports.

The Philippines is the leading provider of the most lucrative live reef fish - coral trout - to buyers in Asia, of which Palawan province accounts for about 60 per cent.

The unregulated live reef fish business generates more than USD 100 million annually for the Palawan fishing communities.

"The annual grouper yield is immense - last year local fishermen reeled in over 700 metric tonnes. Unfortunately we've estimated the sustainable yield to be no more than 140 metric tonnes - meaning the yearly take is five times more than what can be harvested," said Geoffrey Muldoon, Live Reef Fish Strategy Leader for WWF's Coral Triangle Programme.

The fact that the main beneficiaries of the business have signed up for tougher conservation measures is significant, said WWF Vice-Chairman and CEO Lory Tan.

"Local communities are delivery systems for conservation. The stakeholders of Palawan have created a watershed moment. The agreements arrived at have been based on a recognition of the realities of overfishing, human footprint and climate change. In a sense, this is true transformation," he said.

The decision comes as leaders of the six nations that make up the Coral Triangle - Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor Leste - prepare to gather in Manado, Indonesia in May for the World Oceans Conference where they will announce a comprehensive set of actions to protect ecosystems and food security in the region.