Overfishing and Destructive Fishing

In the Philippines, overfishing and destructive fishing are the greatest threats, affecting 98 percent of coral reefs, except for those that are within the effectively managed Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

Overall, the harvest rate of Philippines fisheries is approximately 30 percent above the maximum sustainable yield. This phenomenon of overfishing is due to the high market prices for live reef fishes (read more here Food and Livelihood) and can be explained by The Tragedy of the Commons

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 Overfishing; Source: WWF

Overfishing is a threat to the coral reefs because it causes imbalance in the coral reefs system and importantly, it removes fishes that help coral reefs to survive. For example, herbivores like surgeonfish and parrotfish keep seaweed-like algae from taking over coral reefs, aiding in the survival of the coral reefs.

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Cyanide Fishing; Source: Fishchannel.com

Of much concern, destructive fishing alone threatens nearly 70 percent of coral reefs in the region. Destructive fishing is a secondary consequence of overfishing and it involves methods such as cyanide poisoning and dynamite fishing that directly aims to harvest seafood but indirectly destroys coral reefs in the process. Though cyanide poisoning and dynamite fishing are illegal in the Philippines, they are still commonly practiced. Cyanide poisoning involves stunning the fishes and capturing them alive for the lucrative live reef food trades but at the same time, cyanide often poisons and kills coral reefs that are way more vulnerable to this poison than the fishes are. Additionally, fishers often break the coral reefs to extract the stunned fishes while other marine organisms that once resided in the reefs are killed together or left vulnerable to predation.

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 Dynamite Fishing; Source: SCUBAverse

On the other hand, dynamite fishing involves the use of explosives to kill fishes and the blasting could destroy over 200 square feet of coral reefs at a time. This kills the target fishes, coral reefs and other marine organisms in the vicinity all together.