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Blast fishing competes with reef conference

A scuba diver explores a reef area damaged by a blast  
ENN



A week-long, international gathering of coral reef experts that concluded Friday in Bali has done much more than generate new scientific insights and management strategies to protect the ocean environment.

The symposium has already had an inadvertent, explosive impact on coral reefs in Indonesia.

The Ninth International Coral Reef Symposium apparently played a central role in an ongoing rash of destructive dynamite fishing in Komodo National Park and the arrest of a kingpin of Bali's illegal trade in sea turtles.

The conference drew 1,500 scientists from 54 countries to discuss the condition of coral reefs, the world's richest and perhaps most threatened nderwater ecosystem. Scientists released major new reports showing that 25 percent of the world's coral reefs have been destroyed, and that coral bleaching, possibly caused by global warming, has quickly become one of the worst worldwide threats to these "rain forests of the ocean."

Experts addressed the problem of destructive fishing practices such as bombs and cyanide to catch reef fish. They cited fish bombing as the most serious problem for coral reef conservation in Indonesia, home to the world's richest underwater fauna.

Meanwhile, as the conference went on, anglers across this 17,000-island archipelago set out every day in small boats with homemade bombs, fashioned from beer bottles and filled with fertilizer, kerosene and a simple fuse.

They continued their regular practice of bombing shallow water above coral reefs and scooping up the fish that float to the surface, unfazed by the fact that each bomb leaves a car-sized patch of flattened coral rubble behind.

This week, there have been about 20 explosions, enough to fill local boats with two tons of blasted fish, according to Nature Conservancy fisheries biologist Jos Pet. The bombs have ripped craters in such world-class dive sites as Tatawa Kecil and Gili Lawa Islands, home to some of the finest coral reefs in the world.

Fish bombers in the area of Komodo National Park knew all along that many environmental watchdogs, who play a central role in helping rangers and police track down the bombers, would be away all week at the coral reef symposium. They also knew that the head of the park was at a United Nations meeting in New Zealand.

"Bombers who are from inside the area and have their intelligence worked out, they take advantage of opportunities when they see them," according to Pet.

The practice is illegal, but government agencies in Indonesia, as in most of the tropics, often have too little money or desire to enforce environmental laws. In Indonesia, where blast fishing has degraded 75 percent of the archipelago's reefs, laws are most often enforced where outside organizations help rangers and police do their jobs.

In Bunaken National Park off the northern coast of the central Indonesian island of Sulawesi, scuba dive operators charge a voluntary tax of $5 per diver to fund reef patrols.

"We are paying the police to patrol," said marine biologist Mark Erdmann, who works as an adviser to the national park and with the North Sulawesi Watersports Association. "We pay approximately $200 to $300 for a two-day patrol and have gotten two big busts for bomb fishing, possibly the first in Indonesia. And the local community actually supports it."

Indonesia's waters are known for their unique diversity of ocean life, including this pygmy seahorse photographed at Kungkungan Bay Resort in North Sulawesi  

Yet environmental problems are so volatile in this politically and economically troubled nation that years of conservation progress can be overturned in a matter of days. In Komodo National Park, where park rangers and non-governmental organizations succeeded in reducing fish bombing by 75 percent, a sudden surge of blast fishing coincided with the coral reef symposium.

The symposium provided opportunities of another kind. This month, government officials in Indonesia saw fit to use the occasion of hundreds of prominent marine biologists in Bali, the center of Indonesia's trade in sea turtles, as an opportunity to clean up the nation's environmental image.

More than 10,000 green sea turtles hunted from reefs around Indonesia are traded each year in Bali. They are mostly sold for meat. In Tanjung Benoa, a town just north of the symposium site, vendors actually sell sea turtle satay (shish kebabs) from street-side stands.

Earlier this month, Balinese authorities arrested Pak Wiwi, one of the island's main turtle traders. While there's no proof that this arrest, the first ever under Indonesia's 18-month-old sea turtle protection act, was directly related to the conference, "nothing happens by coincidence in Indonesia," according to marine biologist Ghislaine Llewellyn of WWF-Indonesia.

Noting local news coverage of the symposium and the presence of several top Indonesian officials, including Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri,in attendance, Llewellyn said: "We're really hoping that bringing all this scientific brainpower here will catalyze some serious, tangible support from the Indonesian government for coral reefs."

Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved



RELATED STORIES:
NOAA delivers early warning of coral bleaching
October 5, 2000
Deep-sea corals: out of sight but in harm's way
August 10, 2000
Counting fish adds up for marine protection
July 10, 2000

RELATED ENN STORIES:
Coral reefs will be gone in 20 years, scientists say
Gone with the coral
Age of Aquarius: Undersea lab immersed in coral reef research
Coral reef species forced to go with the flow
Support urged for marine reserves
Deep sea corals: Out of sight but in harm's way
ENN Coral Reef

RELATED SITES:
ENN Ocean IQ Test
Ninth International Coral Reef Symposium
Coral Reef Alliance
Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
http://www.underwaterphotos.com
Komodo National Park

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