Do they use cyanide fishing to capture the fish we eat?

Cyanide fishing began in the 1960s in the Philippines as a way to capture live reef fish for sale primarily to aquarium owners, but is today also done to supply specialty restaurants in Hong Kong and other large Asian cities. Pictured: The ocellaris clownfish, a popular aquarium fish often captured after first being stunned by bursts of cyanide-laced seawater squirted from a plastic bottle.

Dear EarthTalk: I’ve heard of a practice called cyanide fishing, which is used mostly to collect aquarium specimens, but I understand it is also used to catch fish we eat. Isn’t this very unhealthy?

Phil Seymour

Albany, N.Y.

Cyanide fishing, whereby divers crush cyanide tablets into plastic squirt bottles of sea water and puff the solution to stun and capture live coral reef fish, is widely practiced throughout Southeast Asia despite being illegal in most countries of the region. The practice began in the 1960s in the Philippines as a way to capture live reef fish for sale primarily to European and North American aquarium owners — a market now worth some $200 million a year.

But today the technique is also used to supply specialty restaurants in Hong Kong and other large Asian cities. High roller customers can choose which live fish they want prepared on the spot for their dinner at a cost of up to $300 per plate in what the nonprofit World Resources Institute (WRI) calls “an essential status symbol for major celebrations and business occasions.” WRI adds that as the East Asian economy has boomed in recent decades, live reef food fish has become a trade worth $1 billion annually.

Of course, the cyanide itself is no good for the fish that ingest it. Internet chat boards are rife with comments about cyanide-caught aquarium fish developing cancer within a year of being purchased. And many aquarium owners are willing to pay a premium for “net-caught” ornamental fish as they have a longer life expectancy.

But perhaps the greater damage inflicted by cyanide fishing is to the coral reefs where it is employed, as cyanide kills the reefs and also many of the life forms that rely on them. Researchers estimate that more than a million kilograms of cyanide have been squirted onto Philippine reefs over the last half-century. These days the practice is much more widespread, with some of the world’s most productive reefs being decimated.

“Despite the fact that cyanide fishing is nominally illegal in virtually all Indo-Pacific countries, the high premium paid for live reef fish, weak enforcement capacities and frequent corruption have spread the use of the poison across the entire region — home to the vast majority of the planet’s coral reefs,” reports WRI. “As stocks in one country are depleted, the trade moves on to new frontiers, and cyanide fishing is now confirmed or suspected in countries stretching from the central Pacific to the shores of East Africa. Sadly, the most pristine reefs, far from the usual threats of sedimentation, coral mining and coastal development, are the primary target for cyanide fishing operations.”

While there is not much evidence of cyanide-caught fish poisoning the people who eat it — the dose retained by a fish after being puffed is relatively small — the risk nevertheless remains, especially for those who ingest a lot of it.

Nausea and gastritis are the typical symptoms of cyanide poisoning, and of course larger doses can cause death. WRI estimates that some 20 percent of the live fish for sale at markets across Southeast Asia are caught using cyanide. Children, the elderly and pregnant women should be especially careful to avoid cyanide-caught fish.

Dear EarthTalk: I don’t hear much about the environmental impacts of our consumer culture any more, but it seems to me that our “buy, buy, buy” mentality is a major contributor to our overuse of energy and resources. Are any organizations addressing this issue today?

M. Oakes

Miami, Fla.

It is no doubt true that our overly consumerist culture is contributing to our addiction to oil and other natural resources and the pollution of the planet and its atmosphere.

Unfortunately, the tendency to acquire and even horde valuable goods may be coded into our DNA. Researchers contend that humans are subconsciously driven by an impulse for survival, domination and expansion that finds expression in the idea that economic growth will solve all individual and worldly ills. Advertising plays on those impulses, turning material items into objects of great desire imparting intelligence, status and success.

William Rees of the University of British Columbia reports that human society is in a “global overshoot,” consuming 30 percent more material than is sustainable from the world’s resources. He adds that 85 countries are exceeding their domestic “bio-capacities” and compensate for their lack of local material by depleting the stocks of other countries.

Of course, every one of us can do our part by limiting our purchases to only what we need and to make responsible choices when we do buy something. But those who might need a little inspiration to get started should look to the Adbusters Media Foundation, a self-described “global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age.”

Among the foundation’s most successful campaigns is Buy Nothing Day, an international day of protest typically celebrated the Friday after Thanksgiving in North America (so-called Black Friday, one of the year’s busiest shopping days) and the following Saturday in some 60 other countries.

The idea is that for one day a year we commit to not purchase anything and to help spread the anti-consumerist message to anyone who will listen, with the hope of inspiring people to consume less and generate less waste the other 364 days of the year.

The first Buy Nothing Day took place in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1992 with a few dozen participants, but today hundreds of thousands of people all over the world take part.

In recent years some anti-consumerists have added Buy Nothing Christmas to their agendas as well. Some ideas for how to leverage Buy Nothing Christmas sentiment without looking too much like Scrooge include giving friends and family gift exemption cards and asking shoppers in line at a big box store, “What would Jesus buy?”

Beyond Buy Nothing Day and Buy Nothing Christmas, the Adbusters Media Foundation stokes the fire of anti-consumerism throughout the year via its bi-monthly publication, Adbusters, an ad-free magazine with an international circulation topping 120,000. Do yourself a favor and subscribe … and cancel all those catalogs stuffing up your mailbox in the meantime.

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