Proceedings of the International Cyanide Detection Testing Workshop

INTRODUCTION
Cyanide fi shing is a destructive fi shing technique widely used to capture live coral reef fi shes,
including species destined for the marine aquarium and live reef food fi sh trades. The use of
cyanide on coral reefs was fi rst documented in the early 1960s in the Philippines to capture
aquarium fi shes, principally for export to the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany,
and France. Cyanide fi sheries expanded to the live reef food fi sheries in the 1970s, and over
the next two decades it spread throughout Southeast Asia and into the Pacifi c islands. Cyanide
fi shing has been confi rmed in at least 15 countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldive
Islands, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam (Jones et al.,
1998).
Most commonly, sodium cyanide is dissolved in seawater in plastic squirt bottles. Divers using
hookah squirt the milky solution at the target fi sh, which then often retreat into crevices
in the reef or within coral thickets. These corals may be subsequently broken apart by the
diver to capture the fi sh. Cyanide tablets may also be secured to sticks and held close to a
fi sh, or cyanide is mixed with bait and thrown overboard or placed into fi sh traps. There are
also reports that fi shermen occasionally pump the cyanide into the water from surface boats,
mainly to target grouper spawning aggregations. The stunned fi sh are then captured with
hand-nets or attached to lines and hauled to surface support boats, where they may directly
enter the trade or be held in fl oating cages until export.
Cyanide is used in two very different live reef fi sheries. The Live Reef Food Fish Trade (LRFF)
regularly targets large groupers, coral trout, barramundi cod, and humphead wrasse. Although
it focuses mainly on a small number of species, the actual trade is large in terms of the biomass
of fi sh collected. At its peak in 1997, the volume of fi sh in trade was estimated at about
50,000 metric tons. More recently, trade is about 30,000 metric tons per year, with about 60%
imported into Hong Kong and the remainder destined for mainland China, Taiwan, Japan,
and other Asian markets. Until the 1970s, LRFF fi sheries were mainly confi ned to areas in the
South China Sea in close proximity to ports in Hong Kong and mainland China. The trade
spread from the Philippines to Indonesia in the 1980s, and continued to expand to countries in
the Pacifi c Ocean and Indian Ocean during the 1990s. Cyanide use has followed the expansion
of the LRFF trade. One reason for the rapid expansion of this trade is that live fi sh can fetch
substantially higher prices than dead fi sh of the same species. The total retail value of the
LRFF was around $350 million per year between 1997 and 2001. By 2002, it increased to about
$486 million for Hong Kong and $810 million for the entire trade. Individual fi sh can sell for
up to $180 per kilogram, depending on species, taste, texture, availability, and time of year.
Unlike the LRFF, the Marine Aquarium Trade (MAT) consists of a high diversity of fi shes,
most of which are taken from the wild. Over 1,400 species of reef fi sh are traded worldwide
for home aquaria at an annual volume of about 30 million fi sh, with approximately 16 million
imported each year into the United States. Between 70 and 80% of these fi sh are from Indonesia
and the Philippines, where cyanide use is most prevalent. In the MAT, species targeted by
cyanide fi shing include nearly all coral fi sh species, but its use may be most prevalent among
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