Cyanide and blast fishing meet population explosion

To help save the reefs of China, get active with these groups:

State Oceanic Administration China

World Wide Fund for Nature Hong Kong

Junk Science: Volunteers of the Reef Check '97 Hong Kong team, led by Eric Yau (left), slip into something a little less comfortable for the opening dive at Ninepin Islands. Photo: Reef Check

Chinese coral reefs are stressed by agriculture, aquaculture, and firewood cutting of mangroves; the lush reefs south of Hainan province are particularly threatened by overfishing and siltation. The Hainan government announced in October 1997 that it would begin a program to assess environmental quality and pollution control, with an emphasis on protecting the province's forests, coral reefs, and mangroves.

The urban and industrial pollution of Hong Kong make new reef formation impossible there, particularly on the central coast, but there are still corals growing on the hard ocean bottom on the eastern and southeastern coasts; these are threatened by coastal landfilling, sewage discharge, overcollecting, tourism, and cyanide fishing.

In January 1998, Hong Kong Marine Conservation Society chairman Brian Darvell fingered cyanide fishing as the ultimate culprit in a series of food poisonings that sickened 50 people. Local fishermen use cyanide to stun large fish in order to sell them live to restaurants, but the practice also poisons corals, exposing reefs to colonization by algae; ciguatoxin, the poison suspected in the fish-related illnesses, is a byproduct of algal growth and builds up in the tissues of fish that feast on algae.

Meanwhile, neighbors Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines, China, and Vietnam spar continuously over the Spratlys, a chain of coral-reef islands in the South China Sea; each nation believes the Spratlys overlie large oil and natural gas reserves. In a tradition dating back to the 1970s, China and Vietnam shoot it out briefly but inconclusively every few years, the last time in 1992. More recently, China and the Philippines have fought an extended pissing match in which Chinese "fishermen" were caught planting flags on islands in the chain, then fleeing the Philippine navy in boats full of corals and dynamite (see Philippines).

Open war would be bad for the corals—and perhaps just plain silly. A Norwegian geologist told Agence France Presse in November 1997 that the Spratlys' underlying rock formations made the presence of oil unlikely. "The most important thing about the Spratlys," said Erik Haugane, "is its fisheries."