Under this section, I have included overfishing and damaging fishing practices as destructive fishing practices.

Overfishing Comic

First up is the problem of overfishing. With the growing global population, there is an increasing number of people living along coastal areas, meaning that there is increasing fishing pressure on coral reefs- the resource provider. Over 275 million people live in the 10km vicinity of the coast and 30km of a coral reef – one can only imagine the burden of the coral reefs. Especially if you factor in growing human populations, increasingly efficient fishing methods, and rising demands from tourism and global markets, the fish stocks have taken a great hit. (Remember that biodiversity at coral reefs is very high!)

Removing just one fish specie from the coral reef food web can have rippling effects felt throughout the ecosystem. As large fishes are often the preferred catch of fishermen, overfishing of these fishes cause their numbers to decline. Fishermen will then move down the food web, to catch the smaller fishes – a process literally called “fishing down the food chain”. Often, these smaller fishes feed on plants. So going along this description, reefs that are heavily fished are left with low numbers of mainly small fish.  With a decline in number of small herbivorous fishes that control the algae and seaweeds in coral reefs, these plants will then tend to overgrow the corals. As fishes and coral reefs have a close and strong interdependence, overfishing will be detrimental to the reefs. These overly fished reefs, as compared to their healthier counterparts, tend to be more easily prone to stressors and diseases.

As for the fishing methods themselves, there are some that are destructive and destroy the reefs in the process, while also depleting the fish stocks. They mainly fall into two groups: using explosives or using cyanide.

Blast Fishing

Fishing methods that involve explosives are called blast fishing. Though illegal in many countries, it still persists, especially in Southeast Asia. The fishermen will use dynamites, which then stun or kill fishes making them easier to catch. Though the fishermen get their catch, in the process, they have killed all the marine life in the area – and that includes coral reefs. Nothing is left at all to replenish the fish stocks.

Cynaide Fishing.

The second method is using cyanide. Fishermen would pour it into the water around coral reefs, which then stuns the tropical fish without killing them so that they would be sold to aquarium fish markets. Cyanide acts as a poison to coral polyps and kills them, and can also bleach the corals. And fishermen, while in the midst of collecting the stunned fishes, often break the corals.

The sad reality is that this disastrous method of cyanide fishing is actually spreading from areas like Asia to Africa. This is in spite of it being illegal in many countries. After all, when the ornamental aquarium fish market is so lucrative, it may be no wonder that more people are resorting to such means to capture fishes for a livelihood.

So a little spotlight on Southeast Asia:

Remember I previously mentioned the growing population of Southeast Asia? These growing coastal populations in areas like Vietnam, Philippines and much of Indonesia tend to be fishers and villagers. Along the areas where they live, there are usually fringing coral reefs which are easily accessible and whose resources can be harvested with little start-up capital. The coral reefs resources tend to provide a living for the vast number of poor fishermen. In the markets, there tend to be no ice to keep the food fresh, and thus a substantial amount of fishes is sadly wasted – lost to spoilage. Additionally, the traditional fishing methods and restrictions are changed by western concepts that include privatization or ownership.

Also, the coastal populations are made up of migrants from other areas, so the fishermen are a group of mixed cultural backgrounds speaking different languages within the single area. This thus acts as a possible barrier in attempts to hold local coral reef awareness programmes to educate the people.

These add to rising feelings of desperation with regards to resource use, and increasing acceptance to using fishing equipment deemed to be illegal, socially unacceptable or dangerous to the user. Thus in the more crowded areas of the coastlines, destructive fishing problems such as blast fishing are becoming an increasingly common and tragic sight.