THERE is a story going round the local diving community of a Hongkong fishing vessel equipped for diving, which loaded a significant quantity of cyanide here before sailing for Papua New Guinea and the Coral Sea.
What, one may ask, would fishermen be using cyanide for? The answer is simple. Hongkong is a huge market for live fish destined for seafood restaurants, and cyanide is used by divers in an attempt to stun fish which have taken refuge in the caves and crevices of a coral reef with ''sub-lethal'' doses of the poison.
(The cyanide technique enables the fishermen to take live fish which fetch a higher price, but fish overdosed and killed may also find their way to market.) Unfortunately, what is sub-lethal to fish is definitely lethal to corals, and this practice, together with other techniques such as dynamite fishing decimates reefs and permanently eliminates the fish resources dependent on them.
There are two related issues here: irreversible environmental destruction, and a serious threat to public health.
There can be little doubt that these destructive fishing techniques are short-sighted and foolish in the extreme, and it is my belief they will shortly cause the death of the traditional fishing industry in the South China Sea, and the end of a way of life for hundreds of thousands of people.
During the past five or 10 years local divers have witnessed a frightening and rapid deterioration of abundant reefs and fishing grounds off the China coast around Hongkong , as well as those far offshore such as Pratas (Dong Sha), Helen's Shoal, the Paracels (Xi Sha) and Scarborough Shoal. The shocking extent of the destruction is illustrated by the fact that Hongkong vessels are prepared to operate in New Guinea and the Coral Sea to supply a commodity as difficult to transport as live fish to the Hongkong market.