Is Cyanide still an issue in Philippine Ornamental Trade?

The short answer is: YES, cyanide is still common practice among collectors for marine ornamental fish!

The background explanation takes more space: During the last decade the trade on reef organisms for the aquarium has changed considerably. For instance, the number of hobbyists with improved technical capabilities in maintaining diverse and healthy marine life confined in a few hundred gallon tanks increased significantly. Such change triggered a growing demand for suitable animals. From 1985 to 1996, the estimated world export value of marine ornamental organisms was around 25 to 40 million US dollars per year. Then it increased sharply to 750 million US dollars in 1997. According to the survey of the American Marinelife Dealer's Association in 1995, about 10 million marine aquarium organisms have been sold to pet stores in the US alone at an average retail price of 10 US dollars each. The projected earnings of the US pet retailers in 2001 are pegged at 103.2 million US dollars.

Indonesia and the Philippines are considered to be "hot spots" of biodiversity and supply more than half of the global marine ornamental fish trade with the United States importing nearly 50%. Other major importers include Germany, France, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Japan. In the Philippines, catching marine life for the ornamental trade is a thriving livelihood to more than ten thousands of fisher folk.

In order to collect particularly rare, highly priced and difficult to catch species which are very much in demand sodium cyanide was used deliberately. Those destructive fishing techniques and overexploitation of resources have left their marks on the reefs already and target species became much less abundant. It has been estimated that in the Philippines about 150 tons of Cyanide were applied annually for live fish catching (including live fish for food) with devastating consequences for other reef life. The situation in Indonesia is similar; fact is that the cyanide was introduced from Filipino fishermen.

Cyanide is a powerful poison that affects the respiratory system of organisms and causes death through organ damage (liver spleen central nerve system) even after weeks.

Importers in the United States and Europe complained about the low quality of cyanide caught fish and high mortality rates even weeks after receiving the shipments. The unusually high losses discouraged importers from ordering and the Philippine ornamental trade has become the focus of conservationists and coral reef protection groups. They were even considering an import ban if no substantial quality improvements will be achieved in time.

International Marinelife Alliance (IMA), a non-governmental US based organization concerned with marine conservation has launched in the mid nineties through the assistance of the Philippine Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) a comprehensive training program promoting the use of nets in catching marine ornamentals. While at the same time BFAR operated cyanide testing laboratories for live fish in some selected areas of the Philippines. However, this cyanide testing was not as effective as expected because instead of the BFAR personnel taking the fish samples randomly for testing, the fishermen supplied the samples. Naturally, the fishermen were submitting those fish samples which were cyanide-free (damsels, blennies, certain surgeons etc.). With this loophole in the procedure the use of cyanide in catching fish continued particularly for species difficult to catch. Although the net fishing program of IMA and BFAR was partially successful, many fishermen shifted back to the use of cyanide after a few months. The collectors get paid by the number of fish caught and they catch more fish per day using cyanide than using nets. This is the reason why net operating fishermen should get paid more for their fish catch as an incentive to apply a nondestructive technique. MarineFauna rewards collectors and fisher folk using net techniques only and pays higher incentives for quality fish.

In fact, a recent survey of collecting sites, where higher incentives were given to net caught fish showed that cyanide seems not to be a problem anymore: all fishermen interviewed claimed to use exclusively nets, close nets, loops or tiny spears to collect ornamental fish, even if difficult to catch.

According to importers, the abandonment of cyanide only improved moderately the quality of aquarium fishes. They still complained about starved animals with low stress resistance, frequently ectoparasite infested and with substandard water quality in the shipping bags resulting to about 50% mortality. Such criticism of the importers is reflected in fewer orders from the Philippines which affected the fisher folk's livelihood negatively. A multi stakeholder approach was necessary to address the problem and build up a responsible and sustainable managed ornamental trade in the Philippines.

We were approached by importers why we don't have animals on the list each exporter in Manila has… well, the answer is that we trust only a few fisher folks in our vicinity. Not all species are available there but we can vouch for net caught fish! Slowly we expand and get reliable suppliers from other areas. We do not want to compromise quality for short time profit.