Article on cyanide collection of food fish

[PeterIMA]

Cyanide Fishing for Food Fish
Some comments on the use of cyanide to capture groupers, snappers and the Napoleon wrasse for the Live Food Fish Trade. I visited Hong Kong about 3 years ago to attend a USAID-sponsored conference organized by IMA. I had to opportunity to visit several of the live fish importers. This was amazing. They import live fish, live shrimp, and even sensitive species like Pompano from all over SE Asia. I also observed the floating cages that hold millions of dollars worth of groupers at several locations in HK Harbor (with guard dogs on them to keep intruders away).-

The HK Association is headed by Patrick Chan. At the conference he provided lots of statistics on the volumes and species being imported. Mr. Chan claimed they do not condone or support capture of live food fish with cyanide. He claimed they did not have any control over how the fish were collected (generally by collectors in the exporting countries, who are hired by companies who own large transport vessels-one in Kirabati was 250 feet long). I was also somewhat intimidated by the HK-based biological consultants (presumably hired by the Association) that questioned me in detail about cyanide testing. I find it somewhat suspicious that no cyanide testing on the live food fish trade exists in Hong Kong or any country except the Philippines. So, it is kind of hard to prove that live food fish are caught by cyanide in countries like Indonesia. A very revealing article was just published in the SPC Live Reef Fish Information Bulletin (No. 11) authored by Craig Thorburne. This paper describes how the food fish companies bribed Indonesian officials up to the President (Soharto). The rape of the reefs using cyanide was in phases, depending on whether it was national, regional, or municipal officials who were greased (bribed) to allow food fish capture using cyanide.

I was somewhat taken back at the International Coral Reef Symposium held in Bali to have Dr. Mark Erdmann claim that the problem was not cyanide, that the problem was the use of explosives (actually both are serious destructive fishing problems). This was balanced by revealing papers by Dr. Steven Oakley who provided first hand information about the use of cyanide by food fish collectors in Malaysia. As far as the Philippines, the CDT database conclusively shows that many of the grouper species are being targeted with cyanide (50-88% of the fish by species tested shown to have cyanide present in their tissues).

So, cyanide is widely used as a collecting method in the food fish trade. The IMA has trained collectors in Hook and Line Decompression (HALD) methods in the Philippines. Some of the Filipinos have been found collecting live food fish in other countries. So, we have to be concerned that groupers may be overfished even where cyanide is not being used.

Steve Robinson has first hand knowledge about the food fish trade since he exposed it acted as a consultant to the Philippine Dept. of Agriculture (over BFAR) during 1986. Several large HK-based vessels were seized and found to have numerous drums of cyanide on board. Some of the
cyanide being smuggled into the Philippines in the early 1990s (on the M/V Robinson no less) was destined for distribution to the aquarium fish collectors. So, I see that the importation, sale, and distribution of cyanide by exporters applies to both the aquarium fish trade and the live food fish trade. Some of the companies involved export both types of fish. I still disagree with Kalk that the use of cyanide is mostly the live food fish trade. Both trades are actively involved with cyanide fishing.

BFAR needs to enforce Philippine laws (e.g., the new Fisheries Act of 1998) against all users and distributors of cyanide that supports cyanide fishing. So far, I am not convinced that BFAR has the capability to do this (despite what Horge claimed today).

Peter Rubec

 

[mkirda]

My Hairy Ass has pointed out that the Boston Globe article http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/119/s ... ing+.shtml contains some inaccuracies, and I do agree, but as MHA has not replied yet, I feel I shall reply to address the balance and answer the questions asked.

Where is MHA?
I'd be curious to hear his side of the story...

I want to see a Frazer vs. MHA debate.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[Kalkbreath]

Peter, do you agree that the amount of cyanide needed to stun a large grouper.......will inturn kill most small fish and coral exposed to that same concentration a level which only stuns the target grouper? Also, fishermen using cyanide in which the fish are not to be sold alive..{frozen} are fish that can be taken from the reef dead.....so over juicing the reef to capture seafood which is to be frozen, there is no need to be carefull how much cyanide is being applied... A hobby collector ,on the other hand if he over cyanides his target fish........he has nothing to sell. .......thats why hobby fishermen are experts at using just the right amount.......if the coral is killed ,so are the collectors gobies........
_________________
Honda S500

 

[PeterIMA]

Kalk, In 1984 I wrote an article about the effects of cyanide on fish. The scientific literature indicated that cyanide was harmfull at all concentrations used under experimental conditions. Concentratrations greater than 5-10 ppm were fatal for most fish species if the exposure time exceeded about 2 minutes. The exception may certain species of gobies that survived exposure to 50 ppm (Dempster and Donaldson 1974). So, I like Ireland and Robertson (1975) assumed that the cyanide concentration used by the aquarium fish collector was about 5 ppm.

I was quite surprised when Johannes and Riepen (1905) reported that food fish collectors were using concentations of sodium cyanide (NaOH) in excess of 25,000 ppm to subdue groupers hiding under coral heads. They reported that the food fish collectors were using as many as seven 20 mg NaCN tablets in squirt bottles on the reefs. I did some calculations. One 20 mg NaCN tablet is equivalent to 20,000 mg/kg (ppm). So 7 tablets would equivalent to 140,000 ppm of NaCN. If one considers that part of the sodium cyanide tablet is sodium, one needs to consider what proportion is actually cyanide. On a weight basis, the compound is about 51% cyanide. Hence, one NaCN tablet has about 11,000 ppm cyanide. In seawater the tablet dissolves and dissociates into sodium ions (Na+) and cyanide ion (CN-). The latter complexes with water to form hydrocyanic acic (HCN). The HCN is readily absorbed across the gills of the fish. Getting back to your question. If one tablet is fully dissolved in seawater it would be equivalent to about 11,000 ppm of cyanide ion (as HCN). In my Net-caught Cyanide Free-Paper I concluded that the food fish collectors routinely use about 3 to 5 tablets to a squirt bottle. The aquarium fish collectors generally use 1-2 tablets. Either way the concentrations of dissolved HCN and undissolved sodium cyanide greatly exceed the concentrations which are harmfull to the corals. The research by James Cervino and co-authors(including myself) found that 8 genera of corals exposed for 2-3 minutes at concentrations of 300 ppm HCN were severely damaged after one exposusure. The branching Acropora (the most prevalent genus on the reef died within 24 hours shedding their zoothanxellae and their tunic (tissue over the skeleton). Other genera took longer, but they all exhibited very adverse responses and the majority of of the test specimens died within 2 months.

I understand your claim that the aquarium fish collectors use less cyanide per squirt bottle, but there are a lot more aquarium fish collectors than food fish collectors (I estimated about 500 food fishers and 4000 food fishers presently in the Philippines). The concentrations used by both are very harmful to the corals. The cyanide also kills other organisms on the reef, like crustaceans, larval fish, and kills the exposed fish in a non-selective manner. Only fish at the edge of the cyanide plume can be expected to survive. I would agree that experienced collectors must spray the coral heads in a way that allows the fish to escape rather than being entoumbed in the coral head. Triggerfish will lodge themselves in the coral. Many must die of acute doses of cyanide because of this. In any event, I don't see any aguement that you could provide that would convince me that the aquarium fish collectors control the cyanide concentrations sufficiently to not harm the corals.

The dead food fishers spray cyanide on the reefs in huge clouds. One group was observed by Dr. McManus of ICLARM (from an ultalight airplane) spreading cyanide tablets from drums off the back of a motorized boat over the reefs near Bolinao (Del Norte et al 1989). The cyanided area was over 100 meters across. There were divers on 20 floating rafts retrieving the dead fish for sale in the local markets.

I also noted that many schooling species (tangs, fusiliers) were targeted with cyanide (test results in the CDT database). These were not species common to either the live aquarium or live food fish trades.

There is no safe concentration of cyanide. There is no way one can justify its use for any kind of cyanide fishing (aquarium fish, live food fish, or dead food fish). Does that answer your question?

Peter Rubec

 

[PeterIMA]

Correction on my last posting. One 20 gram (g) NaCN tablet is equivalent to 20,000 mg. The tables weigh 20 grams not 20 milligrams (mg). When dissolved in one liter of seawater (volume of a squirt bottle). The concentration would be 20,000 mg/liter (ppm). Hence, there is about 11,000 ppm of HCN for each 20 gram NaCN tablet (Read the last posting).
Peter Rubec

 

[My Hairy Ass]

Why do you insist on calling me Harry?

 

[Kalkbreath]

Thank you Peter,....... But in your research you state that 5-10 ppm kills fish and coral ............and that hobby fishermen use 11,000 ppm? .....This would mean that the hobby fish collectors kill all their fish many times over when they fish? They dont kill all their fish, You need to test at what point {in the field} corals die and the collected fish dont.......Its certain that , the levels veteran hobby collectors use does not kill the fish {at least not for a few weeks}otherwise they would not have any fish to sell......... Therefore , the question is can fish be stunned enough to collect without harm to live coral...... And are the levels used by sea food fishermen ever anywhere a low in concentration as hobby collectors? Lastly I have heard many reports of Seafood fishermen using extra heavy concentrations on a reef to flush out non target reef fish ...as a way of "chumming "the water and attracting more Large groupers as they feed on all the helpless stunned and floating reef fish!
_________________
marijuana plant

 

[Dogfish Head]

Well I've been following the discussion for some months, and thought it was time to join the fray. Introducing myself: Chip Barber, currently a consultant on various protected areas and environmental issues globally and in Southeast Asia (including the Philippines) for The Nature Conservancy, IUCN and the World Bank. I was with IMA until late last year, since October 2001, and worked with IMA on cyanide fishing issues for some years before that when I was at the World Resources Institute, based in Manila (1994-2001). I am still IMA's MAC board member, although my term is ending soon.

I am impressed with the dedication of may members of this discussion forum, and I am glad people are discussing the issues. I've seen a lot of rather emotional and misinformed stuff flying around though, and I hope that I can make a positive contribution.

I view the MAC issue this way: There are three alternatives: status quo, ban the trade, or try and reform the trade. I got interested in MAC because it is an effort to do the third alternative, which I think it is the only realistic path. I agree with many of the criticisms of MAC that have been raised here -- and I have raised similar concerns on the MAC board -- but I think that it is too easy to snipe from the sidelines. MAC is trying to do the right thing, although it fails sometimes, and I don't see any alternative. I agree that the cyanide testing issue is key, and I am not happy with the way MAC has dealt with it thus far, especially the cavalier dismissal of the long-standing CDT testing program in the Philippines as "not internationally approved", but I am hoping that pressure from this forum and others is going to change that.

That's it for now. Oh, Dogfish Head is an excellent dark beer brewed in the DC area, if you were wondering.
[/img]

 

[mkirda]

You need to test at what point {in the field} corals die and the collected fish dont.......Its certain that , the levels veteran hobby collectors use does not kill the fish {at least not for a few weeks}otherwise they would not have any fish to sell......... Therefore , the question is can fish be stunned enough to collect without harm to live coral......

Kalkbreath,

Again, this spouting of 'You need to do this' and "you need to do that"...
Enough, already.

Cyanide kills corals at much lower concentrations than you think it does.
Field tests? Done already, years back. If you actually wanted to know this information, you could have taken me up on my offer months back to send you papers covering this stuff...
At this point, you just want to argue opinions, not facts. You never let a fact stand in the way of your opinion.

At least I've gotten you to admit that cyanide kills corals.
That, in and of itself, was a major accomplishment.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[mkirda]

Introducing myself: Chip Barber, currently a consultant on various protected areas and environmental issues globally

Ahh, the 'net caught fish should cost four to six times more' guy...

Welcome aboard, Chip!
Glad to know more of the MAC BOD is watching.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[Dogfish Head]

Mike: I thought I clarified that via John Brandt. I NEVER said that -- what I said was that for certification to really work, it would take some modest premium on net caught fish being passed on to the collector, but it wouldn't take that much, probably no more than 4-6%. The quote that ended up in the paper was pure crap, I never said it, and as you know, it is ludicrous. Lesson: never talk to the press (at least in the Philippines).

 

[mkirda]

Mike: I thought I clarified that via John Brandt. I NEVER said that -- what I said was that for certification to really work, it would take some modest premium on net caught fish being passed on to the collector, but it wouldn't take that much, probably no more than 4-6%. The quote that ended up in the paper was pure crap, I never said it, and as you know, it is ludicrous. Lesson: never talk to the press (at least in the Philippines).

Chip,

That is probably good advice in any country.

Yes, John did post something to that effect, but I thought it best to hear it straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak...

Thanks for the clarification.

Any idea why MAC would choose to publish the reference to that article in their last newletter? It sure doesn't seem to be conducive to the message they are trying to get out. David V. didn't even really seem to know what I was talking about when I refered to it. Or to the Int'l Herald Tribune one...

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[Dogfish Head]

No idea, since the idea that the costs of certified fish would price them out of the market seems to go against MAC's success. My experience with timber certification (which also has a checkered history) is that there can be some market premium for sustainably produced timber, and that is a situation where the product is the same (unsustainably harvested mahogany is the same product, quality wise, as sustainably harvested mahogany). With a truly working MAC-style system -- which is dealing not only with capture conditions, but also handling and transport -- the reasonable assumption is that the actual product is better quality (lower mortality, better fish health), so there is more than just moral power to motivate a market premium. And this is in fact the case, as can be seen from the higher prices paid for the same species from Australian exporters versus Philippine exporters, from what I have seen.

I agree that this is still all largely theoretical, and MAC has a long way to go to make it happen, but honestly, what is the alternative? Ban the trade? My interest is in conserving coral reefs and seeing a better deal for poor coastal fishing communities, not conserving the aquarium industry per se. If I thought that banning the industry would really help the reefs and the people who depend on them, I'd be out there agitating for a ban. But I think that if we can reform the industry practices to both stop using destructive practices like cyanide and pay the collectors a great share of the value of the product, we will make more progress.

 

[PeterIMA]

Chip, Welcome to Reefs.org. I am happy to see you posting here.

Peter Rubec

 

[John_Brandt]

Chip Barber....great to see you here! Welcome to reefs.org and the Industry Forum.

Your contributions here will be warmly anticipated. Dogfish Head is a wonderful beer. I've had it on the campus of George Washington University. You are welcome to imbibe here in the forum, but I don't allow smoking.

The crowd around here can be pretty rough. I've got some MAC Certified fireproof headgear waiting for you should you need it. If you position yourself correctly in front of the monitor you won't need the fireproof boxer shorts, but I have those as well. I don't wear them because they do chafe.

Welcome again,

John Brandt

MASNA
MAC
CMAS-Chicago

 

[mkirda]

I was somewhat taken back at the International Coral Reef Symposium held in Bali to have Dr. Mark Erdmann claim that the problem was not cyanide, that the problem was the use of explosives (actually both are serious destructive fishing problems).

Since Mark doesn't post here and since I spent a few days talking with him during a dive trip, I will attempt to cover his opinion here...

Mark's contention is pretty simple: What he has seen is food fish collectors come into an atoll and grab every grouper they could over about two weeks, then leave. In the wake of this is a lot of dead coral, yes. However, the dead coral provides prime recruitment areas for new coral growth, and over a couple of years the reef rebounds pretty quickly.

Contrast this with blast fisherman who lob an explosives-laden bottle onto a reef flat and blow the reef apart. The crater is literally 20 feet across in many cases. At the bottom of the crater is lots of rubble, small pieces of coral rock about the size of your thumb. As the tide comes in, the rubble rolls in, as the tide goes out, the rubble rolls out. Coral recruitment here happens, of course. The problem is that the planula are generally abraided away. Mark talked about blast areas around Manado which occured 15 years ago and have been monitored ever since. In those craters, coral recruitment has been good, but survival has been near zero over that time. Even coralline algae has a difficult time cementing the rubble together into some sort of consolidated mass. Given the long recovery time (Decades), Mark feels strongly that blast fishing poses a greater threat overall to the reefs than cyanide use.

He never argued that cyanide wasn't destructive. He did argue that blast fishing is more destructive though.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[John_Brandt]

At the Manila Seafood Market.

Groupers are highly-prized food fish (Plectropomus spp, Variola spp, Epinephelus spp & Cephalopholis spp.)

Surgeonfish are on the left (Acanthurus spp.)

 

[Kalkbreath]

I have a question for Chip..............Perhaps he could settle a continuing question concerning the absence of small Gobi's and blennies from the collection lists of islands which only net collect.............While I love your Cook Island fish..... Chip........why is it that only the Philippines collect small reef fish in large enough numbers to supply the hobby? Is it possible to collect 10,000 Algae blennies a week , without cyanide? If net collectors, can only collect. Say half as many per week .......will this shortage cause the price of small difficult to catch fish to dramatically increase? And would a great demand for a fish which is now in short supply, cause otherwise net fishermen to turn to cyanide ? examlple: If Algae blennies which used to cost $.40 cents.........now because net fishermen can only collect 20 percent as many as in the past ...........the price has increased to $5.00.each...........This would mean even an average Philippine juice fishermen could now make twenty five times more money per fish he collects...........ther would be a huge reason to again use the cyanide..........Also,The retail price of the average marine fish is already quite high. { example: a cook island Ventralis Anthias at ten dollars FOB ........retails for @ $ 49.99 to 69.99 .or a 1.50 huma trigger retails for 39.99 to 49.99 }.........Is it quite possible that we may create a market in which the newbie hobbyists decides to not enter the hobby at all due to even higher pet fish costs. The current system of having one dominant rouge collection country like PI supplying the majority of the hobby, enables collectors like yourself {Chip} to stand out and above the "average" product........When I buy your fish or Vanuatu, Tonga or Ponope.. ,now my store stands out above my competition ............If every collector and importer worldwide had fish as healthy and net cough as Chip. or Mary or Steve ..............What would set........ Mary, Chip or my store apart from all the others? It just might be that those of us which bring about the change in the collection practices .......will be the people with the most to lose?
_________________
Gossip Girl Forum

 

[mkirda]

enables collectors like yourself {Chip} to stand out and above the "average" product........When I buy your fish or Vanuatu, Tonga or Ponope.. ,now my store stands out above my competition

Kalkbreath,

I about peed from laughing so hard, reading this...

Where do you get your information???

Whomever your source is, you should cut all contact with that person, as they are clueless...

Chip Barber is part of IMA, and not a fish collector.
(Unless you have added that to your skills list, Chip...)

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[dizzy]

Mike,
Chip stated he left IMA in October 2002 I believe. Reread his posts. He said is still the IMA representative to the MAC but only for a short while longer.