Fish stocks dwindle as trawlers empty Asia’s seas
By Staff Writers
Nov 10, 2010
Penang, Malaysia (AFP) Nov 10, 2010 – Overfishing in Southeast Asian seas has left garoupas and sea bass in dire straits, searching for mates on denuded seabeds, according to experts alarmed by ever-declining catches. Marine scientists and fishermen say that popular fish species — especially the large and valuable ones — have been caught indiscriminately, causing numbers to plunge dramatically. For big fish “finding a mate is a difficult task. They have to swim a long distance to find one,” said Edward Allison from the World Fish Center in Malaysia’s northern resort island of Penang. One of the culprits is bottom trawling, which involves dragging huge, heavy nets along the sea floor. Large metal plates and rubber wheels attached to the nets move along the bottom and crush nearly everything in their path. Allison said the habitat for young fish, or fry, is also shrinking because the mangrove swamps which provide food and protection are being obliterated by coastal development including tourist resorts. Demand for top-quality seafood, from Southeast Asian nations themselves and from Hong Kong and China, is another major factor behind the emptying of the seas. According to World Fish data, there were 10 times more fish in the Gulf of Thailand in 1965 than 30 years later. In Malaysia the decline was between 80 and 90 percent while in the Philippines it is estimated that there was a 46-78 percent dropoff in fish stocks. … In Tanjung Karang, a fishing village in central Malaysia on the banks of the murky Tengi river which flows into the Malacca Strait, coastal fishermen are gloomy as they come ashore to sell their daily catch. After spending four hours at sea Kamarul Nizam, 35, managed to net only a few kilos of small prawns and cheap catfish. He sells them to Gan Soon Heng, a wholesaler who has been in the business for more than two decades. … Gan shows off a 37 kilo (81 pound) stingray, a 12 kilo garoupa and a long Spanish mackerel. “Such a big stingray is rare. Even the 12 kilo garoupa is considered small. Twenty years ago you could catch much bigger fishes. Now you only get small ones,” he said as he pointed to a few palm-sized stingrays lying in an icebox. …
