Most of Southeast Asia's reefs at risk from overfishing, pollution, says U.S. group

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Most of Southeast Asia's reefs at risk from

overfishing, pollution, says U.S. group

 

Thursday, March 28, 2002

By Sean Yoong, Associated Press

 

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — About 88 percent of Southeast

Asia's coral reefs, which are among the world's most

rich and extensive, face destruction from overfishing

and pollution, a U.S.-based environmental group said

Wednesday.

 

The reefs are important to the economic and social

fabric of the region, " yet they are the most

threatened reefs in the world, " researcher Lauretta

Burke of the Washington-based World Resources

Institute said in a statement issued in Malaysia.

 

The institute has conducted four years of research in

the region by 35 scientists from across Southeast

Asia, the United States, Australia, and Britain. Its

findings were released in the United States last

month.

 

It found that most of the threatened reefs in

Southeast Asia were in Indonesia and the Philippines,

which hold 77 percent of the region's nearly 100,000

square kilometers (40,000 square miles) of coral

reefs. But most reefs in Cambodia, Malaysia,

Singapore, and Vietnam were also endangered, the

institute said.

 

Southeast Asia has 34 percent of the world's reefs,

including more than 600 of the world's 800 known

reef-building coral species, and is the " global

epicenter of marine diversity, " the statement said.

The area surrounding a single island in this region

could yield a higher variety of reef-building coral

species than all the reefs in the Caribbean, it said.

 

The institute found that the most pervasive threat to

reefs was overfishing and proposed finding alternative

livelihoods for fishers to reduce it. Other threats

were coastal development, marine pollution,

sedimentation, and destructive fishing practices such

as the use of poison and dynamite, it said.

 

The institute said Southeast Asian governments should

expand the network of protected areas that currently

hold about 8 percent of the region's reefs. It also

called for the regulation of international trade in

live reef organisms, which exceeds US$1 billion per

year. Southeast Asia supplies nearly all of the

world's live reef fish that are sold as food.

 

Copyright 2002, Associated Press

 

 

 

 

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