Cyanide fishing

Cyanide fishing is a method of collecting live fish mainly for use in aquariums, which involves spraying a sodium cyanide mixture into the desired fish's habitat in order to stun the fish. The practice hurts not only the target population, but also many other marine organisms, including coral and thus coral reefs.

Cyanide fishing is practiced mainly in saltwater fishing regions of Southeast Asia. Since the practice was never widely publicized or officially approved, its origins are uncertain, but it is believed to have originated in the 1950s in the Philippines. Later in the twentieth century the practice was adopted by some fishing outfits in Indonesia, Thailand, Maldives, and Taiwan, among others. Cyanide fishing was initially developed to stun and capture fish for aquariums and collectors, but it was soon used for catching food fish as well. It is illegal in many of the countries in which it is practiced, although these laws are often minimally enforced.Grouper, wrasse, and coral trout are among the more popular species of fish captured through cyanide fishing.

The World Resources Institute determined that approximately 20% of the live fish traded on the Philippine market in 1996 were caught using cyanide; assuming this is reflective of southeast Asian practice as a whole, environmental engineer David Dzombak estimates that 12,000 to 14,000 tons of live food fish are caught each year using this method.

Colourful, particularly eccentric, and therefore rare coral fish are packed into plastic bags; up to two thirds of these fish die during transport. Estimates suggest 70 to 90% of aquarium fish exported from the Philippines are caught with cyanide. Due to the post-capture handling stress and the effects of the cyanide, fish are bound to have a shorter life span than usual in aquariums. According to an interview with experienced aquarium owners, they were willing to pay more for net-caught fish because of the higher survival rate. They also said they would not trust an ecolabelling system, which can be misleading.

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