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In the Philippines, Dynamite Fishing Decimates Entire Ocean Food Chains
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2018-06-21 06:20:16 UTC
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In the Philippines, Dynamite Fishing Decimates Entire Ocean Food
Chains
By Aurora Almendral, June 15, 2018, NY Times

[video]
A fisherman throwing a homemade bomb into the sea to blast fish and
scoop up their remains in Bohol, the Philippines, in April.
Ben C. Solomon/The New York Times

BOHOL, Philippines — Nothing beats dynamite fishing for sheer
efficiency.

A fisherman in this scattering of islands in the central Philippines
balanced on a narrow outrigger boat and launched a bottle bomb into
the sea with the ease of a quarterback. It exploded in a violent
burst, rocking the bottom of our boat and filling the air with an
acrid smell. Fish bobbed onto the surface, dead or gasping their last
breaths.

Under the water, coral shattered into rubble.

The blast ruptured the internal organs of reef fish, fractured their
spines or tore at their flesh with coral shrapnel. From microscopic
plankton to sea horses, anemones and sharks, little survives inside
the 30- to 100-foot radius of an explosion.

With 10,500 square miles of coral reef, the Philippines is a global
center for marine biodiversity, which the country has struggled to
protect in the face of human activity and institutional inaction. But
as the effects of climate change on oceans become more acute, stopping
dynamite and other illegal fishing has taken on a new urgency.

According to the initial findings of a survey of Philippine coral
reefs conducted from 2015 to 2017 and published in the Philippine
Journal of Science, there are no longer any reefs in excellent
condition, and 90 percent were classified as either poor or fair. A
2017 report by the United Nations predicts that all 29 World Heritage
coral reefs, including one in the Philippines, will die by 2100 unless
carbon emissions are drastically reduced.

“It is a bit dismal,” said Porfirio Alino, a research professor
specializing in corals at the Marine Science Institute at the
University of the Philippines in Diliman.

The effects of climate change — warming waters and acidification that
cause coral bleaching and push some reefs to death — are difficult to
address. But if the stresses caused by human activity can be stopped,
Dr. Alino explained, coral reefs have a better chance of surviving.

Dynamite fishing destroys both the food chain and the corals where the
fish nest and grow. Blast fishing kills the entire food chain,
including plankton, fish both large and small, and the juveniles that
do not grow old enough to spawn. Without healthy corals, the ecosystem
and the fish that live within it begin to die off.

New York Times journalists embedded with dynamite fishermen in Bohol
who gave exclusive access on the condition that we not use their names
or the names of the islands where they live, for fear of being
arrested.

With a rubber hose attached to an air pump wedged between his teeth,
and no other gear aside from a single homemade flipper and a pair of
goggles, one of the fishermen sank 30 feet into the water after the
bomb went off. He lurched along the ocean floor, collecting stunned
and dead fish among the crevices and broken coral.

Twenty minutes later he surfaced, heaving for breath, with five
high-value reef fish and 12 pounds of scad and sardines. It was a
small catch. The men on the boat saved a few handfuls for their
families, and sold the rest to a local trader. The two men split the
earnings, about $10, between them.

The fisherman says it is the only job he knows that earns this kind of
money. For legal net fishermen, six pounds of fish is a good day.
Often, they come back with nothing. With dynamite fishing he can come
back with 20 pounds and sometimes as much as 45 pounds, if he lucks
out with a large jack or grouper.

Back on the island, one of the men lit a gas burner under a pan and
used his bare hand to stir a splash of kerosene into white beads of
solid ammonium nitrate. The fertilizer has been illegal in the
Philippines since 2002, but the men buy sacks of it from dealers on a
neighboring island.

The other man honed a kitchen knife against a stone, sliced off an
inchlong fuse, wrapped it in a piece of aluminum and strapped on a
match as a detonator. They scooped some sand from the ground, funneled
it into the bottom of a used glass vinegar bottle and packed the
bottle with explosives.

The fuse, he explained, gives him four seconds to throw the bomb
before it explodes. A poorly made bomb or a distracted fisherman could
prove fatal. Men on the islands have been left blind, deaf or maimed,
and death has become part of the fishermen’s lore. Just this year,
they said, a man from a neighboring island was killed, his arm and
most of the upper half of his body blackened by the explosion.

In 2014, the European Union issued a yellow card to the Philippines
warning that it would be banned from exporting to the bloc unless its
fishing activities were better regulated. In response, the Philippines
produced a new fisheries code that called for stricter measures
against illegal methods and commercial overfishing. In 2015, the
yellow card was lifted.

“Our law is harsh, painful and swift,” said Eduardo Gongona, director
of the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources. “We have
no pity on illegal fishers and illegal fishing.”

Gloria Ramos, vice president of Oceana Philippines, a nongovernmental
organization for ocean conservation, agreed that the new laws were
strong but said they were not being properly implemented because of
the influence the commercial fishing industry has over government
officials.

Despite signs that Philippine fisheries are collapsing, Ms. Ramos
said, “there is no sense of urgency.”

Mr. Gongona said groups like Oceana were overstating the problem in
order to get more funding, and that any reduction in the numbers of
wild-caught fish could be made up for by increasing the output of
commercial fish farms.

On one of the islands of Bohol, Jaime Abenido, a grizzled 68-year-old
handline fisherman who does not use dynamite, said that 30 years ago,
he could go out to sea and fill his boat with fish “until it started
to sink.” Today there are far fewer fish, he says, and the ones that
remain are tiny. He listed half a dozen species he has not seen in
decades.

Nevertheless, Mr. Abenido said he does not believe that fish are in
danger of running out.

Despite the evidence, it’s common for Filipinos to deny the urgency of
the problem, said Jimely Flores, senior marine scientist for Oceana.

“It’s quite hard to believe what the scientists are saying,” Ms.
Flores said. “They don’t really feel that much impact until it’s
really very bad.”

But to her the problem is already apparent.

“It’s happening,” Ms. Flores said. “In some dynamited areas, if you
dive you don’t see any fish at all.”

Researchers have warned that if current trends continue, the global
supply of fish could be dramatically reduced in coming decades.

In the Philippines, stocks have declined precipitously. According to a
report by the Philippine national statistics board, the average daily
catch in 1970 was 45 pounds. By 2000, that had dropped to 4.5 pounds.
In those years, declining fish stocks pushed more people into illegal
fishing.

In the office of Roberto Rosales, the local coordinator for coastal
resources management for the town of Bien Unido in Bohol, is a mural
depicting an officer standing on the edge of a boat, a machine gun
clasped menacingly in his hands.

Illegal fishing has decreased from the lawless heyday of the 1990s and
2000s, and at first Mr. Rosales tried to deny that illegal fishing
continued under his watch. He admitted, however, that the town has
only four slow boats to patrol 130,000 acres of sea.

“It’s so very far,” he said.

Even if illegal fishermen are known to officials, it’s difficult to
charge them unless they are caught in the act.

“We catch an illegal fisherman and they say, ‘This is our last year
because our daughter is in college,’” Mr. Rosales said. “It’s really
not enough. We have to address the needs of 17,000 fisher folks, and
we cannot do it.”

Developing more sustainable fishing practices as well as other
economic opportunities would help people transition out of destructive
fishing, Dr. Alino said. Countries and corporations that emit high
levels of carbon could also provide more support.

Back on the water, I asked the dynamite fisherman if he thought he was
the reason there were fewer fish. He shook his head. His parents used
this method before him, he said, and there are still fish in the sea.

What would happen, I asked, if the scientists were right, and the
oceans did run out of fish? He contemplated the possibility for a
moment. Patay, he answered. The fishermen would be dead.

But he doesn’t believe that will happen. The fish will never run out,
he said. It was a statement more of denial than hope.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/world/asia/philippines-dynamite-fishing-coral.html
me
2018-06-21 07:05:53 UTC
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