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Sensitive Coral Reefs Under Seige HONOLULU, Hawaii, December 13, 2001 (ENS) - Tropical fish floating in restaurants and home aquariums are lovely to look at, but environmentally destructive methods for collecting them are endangering sensitive coral reefs around the world. Reefs are threatened by an onslaught of other human activities too - coastal development, marine based pollution, and bleaching due to climate change. The vast majority of colorful aquarium fish are collected from reefs off Indonesia and the Philippines. Collecting also takes place offshore in Hawaii, Florida, the Caribbean and Red Sea countries, Sri Lanka, East Africa, the Maldives and other Pacific island countries.
Conservation groups have been trying for more than a decade to persuade fish collectors that they should use nets instead of cyanide. The use of cyanide to stun and capture live coral reef fish began in the 1960s in the Philippines to supply the growing market for aquarium fish in Europe and North America, a market now worth more than $200 million a year, says the World Resources Institute, a Washington, DC based environmental think tank. The institute's 2000 publication, "Reefs at Risk: A Map-Based Indicator of Threats to the World's Coral Reefs," surveys all dangers to coral reefs worldwide and offers recommendations for their conservation. Now a new tool has emerged that may motivate the entire aquarium trade, from collectors to retailers, to be more protective of the reef environment. The Honolulu based Marine Aquarium Council (MAC) launched a new certification system in late November that aims to protect coral reefs and ensure the quality of organisms in the marine aquarium trade. The MAC certification tool meets internationally accepted environmental and quality standards. It relys on a system of independent certifiers who approve operations that meet these standards. Tropical fish buyers will be able to identify certified facilities and organisms by looking for the MAC certification label on store windows and retail aquarium tanks - an oval shape encircled by the words "Marine Aquarium Council Certified Organisms." The system allows consumers to identify marine aquarium organisms that were collected in a sustainable way and handled to ensure optimal health, said Dr. Bruce Bunting, a vice president of the World Wildlife Fund and a MAC board member. IUCN, the World Conservation Union, says coral reefs provide over 100 countries with fish and other services such as tourism worth $500 billion a year. They limit damage from tidal waves and erosion, and support 93,000 fish species. These valuable reefs face many other threats besides pressure from the aquarium trade. The growth of coastal cities and towns puts nearby reefs at risk. Where space is limited, airports and other construction projects are built upon living reefs. Dredging of harbors and shipping channels and the dumping of spoils result in the destruction of these habitats. In many areas, coral ecosystems are mined for sand and limestone, which is made into cement for new buildings. The World Resources Institute estimates that 58 percent of the world's reefs are potentially threatened by human activities - ranging from coastal development and destructive fishing practices to overexploitation of resources, marine pollution, and runoff from inland deforestation and farming. Even unregulated tourism can pose a threat. In the Indian Ocean, thousands of miles of reef have been killed including in tourist areas such as the Seychelles, Mauritius and the Maldives. Swimmers and divers in the Gulf of Aqaba - bounded by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt - have destroyed corals through trampling. Boat anchors create further damage to reefs. Australia's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority has attempted to protect the world's largest reef by providing buoys for visiting boats to use in some of the most endangered areas. Thousands of miles of corals in the Western Pacific, from Vietnam to the Philippines and Indonesia, have died or bleached due to global warming that has raised the ocean temperatures too high for the survival of symbiotic algae that live on corals providing their food and energy. Huge swathes of the coral at Rangiroa in French Polynesia died during three months of exceptionally warm weather in 1998, when sea temperatures soared to an average of 32 degrees Celsius for the first time. Research by Newcastle University's Department of Marine Sciences has shown damage to the 800-year old coral reefs was catastrophic, and that it would take more than 100 years to return to its former glory. To reverse this destruction The International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) is a partnership among nations and non-government organizations seeking to implement international conventions and agreements for the benefit of coral reefs and related ecosystems. Established in 1995, the ICRI partnership and approach has been to mobilize governments and other stakeholders in an effort to improve management practices, increase capacity and political support, and share information on the health of reef ecosystems. Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2001. All rights reserved. |
Many fish collectors in these countries employ cyanide, a poisonous
chemical that stuns tropical fish, making collection easier. But widespread
cyanide application harms coral reefs and marine ecosystems and threatens
food sources for nearby populations.
