WWF 28 Feb 09;
Kota Kinabalu: The Philippines’ fishery that supports part of Sabah’s flourishing live seafood trade has agreed to introduce a quota that will cut catches by 27 per cent or around 200MT in an effort to stave off the collapse of their fishery.
At a summit this week in the Philippines province of Palawan, live reef fish traders also agreed to establish a local alliance to work with the government to put this quota and a raft of other initiatives into action.
The unprecedented actions were taken to protect the livelihoods of more than a hundred thousand people who depend on the Palawan fishery.
WWF-Philippines, which co-convened the summit with the Palawan Council for Sustainable Development on 24 February 2009, said Malaysia would play an important role in protecting food security in the region.
“Malaysia in particular will play a vital role in the sustainability of the live reef fish trade in this region,” said Ken Kassem, Sulu-Sulawesi Marine Ecoregion Manager for WWF-Malaysia.
”We suspect that much of the live reef fish that are traded through Kudat probably come from southern Palawan in the Philippines. Sabah appears to be a hub for live reef fish trade in the region. Government initiatives such as the Sulu-Sulawsei Marine Ecoregion and the Coral Triangle Initiative have recognized the importance of managing the transboundary nature of this trade”
Head of the Marine Resource Management Branch of the Department of Fisheries in Sabah, Lawrence Kissol attended the meeting.
“We look forward to working with the Department of Fisheries Sabah and local traders to establish a regional agreement between traders from other live reef fish hubs, such as those in Sabah,” said Mr Kassem.
The live reef fish trade from Palawan has serviced the appetite for fresh tropical fish at business lunches and expensive banquets in Asia, including Malaysia, since the 1980s. The trade has brought more than US100 million dollars annually to fishing communities on the island, where popular coral trout is caught often with the use of cyanide or explosives.
WWF estimates that at current levels of overfishing, the live reef fish trade in Palawan would collapse by 2020.
“The trade in live reef fish in Palawan supports entire communities, many of which have few alternatives for livelihoods, yet the fishery is highly unregulated and is in a serious state of decline,” said Dr Geoffrey Muldoon, Live Reef Fish Trade Strategy Leader for WWF’s Coral Triangle Programme.
“Surveys undertaken show that 60 per cent of all fish taken from the reefs around Palawan are now juveniles, which is a good indication that the adults have been removed from the ecosystem and that it has been highly overfished,” Dr Muldoon said.
“Under a business as usual scenario, Palawan’s live reef fish trade would become economically unviable in about a decade. We hope that we can build on the new quota system and establish a comprehensive management plan that will protect communities from this significant food security threat.
“This comes at a time when climate change threatens to place further pressures on ecosystems and on fish populations dependent on coral reefs for survival. Building resilience into ecosystems is critical for the ongoing food security of millions of people in the region, such as those in Palawan.”
Leaders of the six nations that make up the Coral Triangle – Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste – will 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.
The IUCN for the first time last year assessed all 161 species of grouper, a reef fish which makes up a large part of the Coral Triangle’s live fish trade. Twenty grouper species were assessed as threatened with extinction, including the squaretail coral grouper and humpback grouper, which are found throughout the Coral Triangle and are a popular luxury live food in Asian seafood restaurants.
For more information:
Geoffrey Muldoon, Live Reef Fish Trade Strategy Leader, WWF Coral Triangle Programme, Tel: +61 439 741148, Email: g.muldoon@transpac.net.au
Charlie Stevens, Media Manager, WWF Coral Triangle Programme, Tel: +61 (0)2 8202 1274, +61 (0) 424 649 689, Email: cstevens@wwf.org.au
Additional notes:
* The Coral Triangle is the most diverse marine region on the planet, matched in its importance to life on Earth only by the Amazon rainforest and the Congo basin. Defined by marine areas containing more than 500 species of reef-building coral, it covers 5.4 million square kilometres of ocean across six countries in the Indo-Pacific – Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste.
* The Coral Triangle also directly sustains the lives of nearly 130 million people and contains key spawning and nursery grounds for tuna, while healthy reef and coastal systems underpin a growing tourism sector. WWF is working with other NGOs, multilateral agencies and governments around the world to support conservation efforts in the Coral Triangle for the benefit of all.
* For information on the Coral Triangle go to: www.panda.org/coraltriangle
