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Morning News

Our Planet: Philippine Authorities Cracking Down on Cyanide Fishing

Aired July 14, 2000 - 10:19 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: In the Philippines, authorities are cracking down on a very destructive practice: cyanide fishing. Fishermen now are encouraged to take a new and very simple approach to making the catch of the day.

CNN's Gary Strieker visited Coron Bay in the Philippines to bring us the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARY STRIEKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These fishermen in the Philippines are using what is for them a new technology. Yet it's very simple: a baited hook on a line weighted with a stone.

(on camera): They won't go back to the old ways.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They won't do it again.

STRIEKER (voice-over): The old way for these people was cyanide fishing, an illegal and destructive practice, but common across Southeast Asia. Divers squirt sodium cyanide into corals to stun and capture live food fish, especially groupers, like there coral trout.

It is a billion dollar trade. Every year, thousands of tons of live reef fish are shipped mainly Hong Kong dealers, and then to selection tanks in Chinese restaurants.

During the last 30 years, growing demand for live reef fish convinced many fishermen to use sodium cyanide as an easy way to capture large numbers of fish, but at a very high cost, wiping out many fish populations and killing vast areas of coral reefs.

In the Philippines, authorities are now cracking down on cyanide fishing. Exports are inspected and randomly tested at cyanide detection labs. But law enforcement alone is not enough. Desperately poor fishermen will not change their ways without incentives.

On Konepa (ph) Island, conservationists have convinced more than 400 fishermen to give up cyanide, training them to use a more sustainable method: a baited hook and line. It's not an easy sell. For these people could catch many more fish with poison.

EVILIO ABE, INTL. MARINELIFE ALLIANCE: I told them: OK, you can catch as much as 20 pieces a day. Then, tomorrow, you will be transfer to another place because the place that you can use poison, no more fish.

STRIEKER: That convinces many because they've already seen declining catches. And there may eventually be few fish left for the next generation.

There are also financial rewards: higher market prices for fish certified as cyanide free. That means more money for new boats and equipment; more money for their families and for recreation.

(on camera): Repeated testing shows that virtual all the fishermen at Konepa Island have stopped using sodium cyanide and they have destroyed the local myth that groupers cannot be caught live using hook and line.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No more sodium cyanide fishing, only hook and line.

STRIEKER (voice-over): Progress in one small area against a critical threat to coral reefs across Southeast Asia.

Gary Strieker, CNN, in Coron Bay, the Philippines.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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