Billion-dollar Asian reef fish industry in peril

Billion-dollar Asian reef fish industry in peril

Dan Eaton, Reuters, Jakarta

An insatiable appetite for live reef fish in Asian restaurants
is ravaging aquatic stocks in Indonesia, damaging reefs and
threatening the sustainability of a US$1 billion industry in the
region, a conservation group said.

The use of toxic cyanide and hooks to catch the fish could
exhaust Indonesian waters of the most valuable species in three
years, Peter Mous of the U.S.-based Nature Conservancy told
Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

Indonesia, which has more than 20 percent of the globe's coral
reefs -- more than the Atlantic, Caribbean and eastern Pacific
combined -- has become the world's top supplier of wild-caught,
live reef fish, cornering more than 50 percent of the Hong Kong-
centered market for the luxury food item.

But that could change if measures are not taken to alter the
way the industry works, said Mous, science manager at the Nature
Conservancy's Bali-based South East Asia Center for Marine
Protected Areas, which has begun a project to cultivate reef fish
for the consumer market.

"Indonesia used to be the main exporter for most species. But
now, for instance, with the coral trout, most is coming from the
Great Barrier Reef (in Australia), mainly because the Indonesian
stocks are already gone," Mous told Reuters in an interview.

In recent years, the fish trade depleted populations in the
South China Sea and around the Philippines. Fishermen then turned
to Indonesia to bolster their catches. Scientists now warn that
populations across the archipelago will be virtually exhausted in
three to five years.

"When I was studying fisheries biology 20 years ago I never
thought it was actually possible to catch the very last fish out
of an ecosystem," said Mous.

But with some reef fish fetching as much as $35 a kilo (2.2
pounds) for fishermen, and $110 dollars a kilo in restaurants in
Hong Kong, the balance has tipped against the environment.

"Thirty-five dollars per kilo. That is quite an acceptable
wage for one week of work for a local fisherman," said Mous.

The desperate situation has forced conservationists to take a
new approach -- working to supply consumer demand.

Last year the Nature Conservancy launched a pilot project in
Indonesia's Komodo National Park, about 400 km (250 miles) east
of Bali, training local communities to raise six species of fish
for the live reef fish industry.

The Komodo project is cultivating tiger grouper, estuary
grouper, mangrove jack, Asian seabass, leopard coral grouper and
mouse grouper, which can cost in excess of $100 a kg in

restaurants.

"It would be very difficult to join the shark fin industry.
Culturing sharks has never really been done or tried. There the
wiser strategy is to work on the consumer side and warn people
against eating shark fin," said Mous.

"But it is a good additional strategy that works in this
particular case. Where it is possible to work constructively with
the industry it should be done."

Hong Kong is the world's largest trader and consumer of live
reef fish. Other major consumers include Singapore and mainland
China.

The Komodo project made its first sale -- 500kg of cultured
estuary grouper to Hong Kong buyers -- in June, and aims by 2008
to become a major player in the Asian live reef fish market.

"The industry basically are business people. If you can
explain to them that it is possible to make a dollar and keep
making dollars they will do it," said Mous.

"I'm not convinced it will work yet. But it will fail if we
can't find a business partner."

And he has an answer for diners who fear cultured fish won't
be as tasty.

"It can't be denied that the fact that a fish is wild creates
a different perception with some consumers, especially in China,"
Mous said. "But we found in blind taste tests (some) cultured
fish were preferred to the wild variety."