A Hard Trade

Yvonne Sadovy, a fish ecologist from the University of Hong Kong, asks Jones Ridep where he fishes and for what. Photo: Scott Radway

Yvonne Sadovy swings her hand over a map unfolded on a wood bench inside Jones Ridep's tin-roofed, waterside kitchen. Outside in Peleliu, a sleepy, barely-populated island in Palau, it's the definition of serene: Crystal water laps under coconut stands, droopy dogs loaf in the shade and piled fishing nets dry in the sun.

But inside, Ridep, a 53-year-old Islander who makes a modest living with his nets, hooks and spears-is uneasy.

She wants to know what he catches and where. She is asking specifically about fish that gather in mass numbers to spawn, fish that make themselves like fish in a barrel for a few months each year.

What does he catch?

"Plenty," says Ridep, cautiously, like each syllable was its own word.

Motioning to the map again, Sadovy asks "Where?"

Ridep slowly places his index finger on the map: "Plenty."

And that's how quietly it can start, the trade, known to insiders as the Live Reef Food Fish Trade. First, businessmen come asking those questions. If they like what they hear, negotiations between the owners of foreign fishing vessels and the government or a village follow. Promises of money are made, and if no regulations are in place, those fish are plundered, often till they are too few left to sustain the fishery.

It's a good reason to be uneasy.

And fish ecologists are concerned that as the trade predictably grows in coming years, scattered ventures in the Pacific Islands will turn into a major industry, finally spilling over in dramatic fashion from the largely battered reefs of the Philippines and Indonesia. Because far away, most markedly in Hong Kong and mainland China, a mix of culture, buying power and an appetite for symbols of status has spawned an insatiable demand for reef fish. The most prized are the groupers and wrasses, preserved alive so a cistomer can pick one as it scoots around a fish tank, seconds before a chef steams it.

And the easiest-and most damaging-way to get the groupers and wrasses is fishing out a "spawning aggregation site," the place those fish predictably come to reproduce. Local fishermen know exactly where and when. Traditional chiefs used to control-a few still do-who fished there and how much they took. Because over fishing spawning sites, as traditional leaders and scientists will tell you, can collapse a fishery in just two or three years.

What makes the issue so biting for resource-poor Pacific Islands-especially undeveloped areas like Peleliu-is that they need to find ways to make money. So, at first blush, with little known about the trade in the Islands, it just looks like a money maker.

Sadovy, who comes to Peleliu not as a businesswoman, but as a fish ecologist from the University of Hong Kong, estimates the trade is worth US$1 billion a year. Local communities make one-tenth of the money a fish is worth, according to The Nature Conservancy. And then they lose their resource. That means those fish are no longer there for subsistence living and 80 percent of rural communities in the Islands depend on fish for their protein.

In Palau, the closest Pacific Island to the Philippines, and first to see the trade, Chinese businessmen came asking questions back in 1984. The same questions Sadovy asks Ridep today. Then the boats came. In two years, a grouper-spawning site was fished out. And two decades later that spawning site has not rebounded. The resource is lost. The money gained, a pittance.

So Sadovy and others who are working to inform Pacific Island countries- both at the management level and in the villages-about the impacts of the unregulated trade and the need to assess and monitor their resources.

"We are building a case that there is a problem that needs to be addressed," says Sadovy, who is the director of the Society for the Conservation of Reef Fish Aggregations, a group formed in 2001 to call attention to the issue. "If nothing is done, [collapsing fisheries] is the direction things are likely to go."

As the director for TNC Pacific Islands coastal marine program, Andrew Smith is often asked just how many fish can be taken before a fishery collapses. "I have asked every fisheries biologist that I have talked to, and they never ever answer the question," Smith says.

This is because scientific studies into these species are just starting and all the intricacies of their life cycles, and the number of fish needed to insure rebound each year is unknown. There is stress already on the fisheries from subsistence fishing and local commercial fishing, which, on their own, can over fish a spawning site. The science is further complicated by the fact that fishery researchers must weigh everything from global warming to poor land-use. It's almost impossible to determine what is too much without a good deal more site-specific research.

Here is what Smith is willing to say:

"I don't know anywhere within the Pacific where [live reef fishing] has actually been shown to be a viable, sustainable fishery." For instance, to make an acceptable profit, vessels need from 15 to 20 metric tons of fish, depending on the distance to sale and the availability of air freight. That means the companies must hit sites hard.

Mariculture is one suggested alternative, but current technology, Sadovy says, has only been able to farm large numbers of young groupers caught in the wild. The fish is still lost from the wild before it ever breeds. "It's madness if you think about it from a scientific point of view," Sadovy adds.

Until there are viable alternatives, or until enough is known about reef species, "we need to figure out how to protect these things now with whatever knowledge we have. We can't wait until all the answers are there. The resource will be gone," Smith says. TNC and a number of other NGOs have teamed with the Secretariat of the Pacific Community- the main contact for fisheries expertise for Island countries throughout the Pacific- to do something about the reef fish trade.

Since its early foray into the trade, Palau has become "an international leader in spawning aggregation protection," says Kevin Rhodes, a fish ecologist hired by TNC to teach Islanders basic techniques to assess and monitor their spawning sites. Palau already protects two spawning aggregation sites and bans fishing grouper from April through July countrywide, a period aimed to cover the spawning season. Because enforcement is difficult, protecting a few sites instead of all the sites is realistic. And with a ban on the spawning season, a fairly effective program can be developed. As long as it is implemented and then effectively enforced, because poaching remains a threat in the huge sea expanses islands must manage.

The Pacific Islands have been lucky thus far to see very few instances of destructive fishing as used in the Philippines and Indonesia. The most harmful associated with the trade is releasing cyanide on the reef, stunning all sea life, not just the ones the fishermen will keep. The long-term effects of cyanide fishing on those organisms appears detrimental in all cases. So far, hook-and-line has been the method to fish in the Islands, although scattered use of cyanide has occurred and a vine known as poison rope has been used throughout Melanesia, Smith says. But the potential for things to get bad in the Pacific is there, with or without these toxic methods.

The trade began pushing out into Micronesia and western Melanesia in the 1990s and many experts expected a big growth in the Islands in 1995. Then the Asian economy crashed and the biggest Hong Kong seller went belly-up. SARS provided another hiatus for Islands countries to get ready. But the Asian economy will eventually rise and Hong Kong and mainland China will of course be at the forefront of growth. "Realistically, it is a trade that is just going to increase," Smith says.

Experts are predicting a trade of live reef fish centered in Hong Kong is going to grow rapidly in the islands in coming year and people like Sadovy want to arm islands with the knowledge of the risks.

Experts are predicting a trade of live reef fish centered in Hong Kong is going to grow rapidly in the Islands in coming years and people like Sadovy want to arm islands with the knowledge of the risks. So it's a race to arm Islands with knowledge.

Sadovy does her part, wrapping up her interview in Peleliu by giving Ridep a small token of thanks, a plastic lighter. She gives one to everyone she interviews. Ridep smiles, perhaps his uneasiness eased somewhat by the friendly gesture. She will use his answers to help Palau Conservation Society protect the reef fish, so hopefully his kids can fish like he does.

Then Sadovy is off to other islands.

"But they will bring money," she says matter-of-factly of her opponents. "Not plastic lighters."