Michael Richardson, Jakarta – The Mentawai Islands along the southern coast of Sumatra in Indonesia are a picture of tropical paradise: countless remote atolls fringed by white sand beaches and coconut palms.
But below the surface of the crystal-clear azure waters, on the coral reefs that skirt the islands, it is another story.
Jeroen Deknatel, director of operations at Fantasea Divers based on Phuket Island in Thailand, was so impressed at the tourist and recreational diving potential of the Mentawais that he took his live-aboard dive ship down to the area 18 months ago and organized two cruises for divers.
Two years earlier, scientists from the Bung Hatta University in Padang, the main port city in the region, had visited the Mentawais and found pristine coral reefs teeming with fish.
Yet on its two cruises, covering more than 1,280 kilometers (800 miles) and 65 dive sites throughout the chain of islands, the Fantasea found that most of the reefs were completely destroyed.
"It was an underwater wasteland," Mr. Deknatel recalled. "Hundreds of miles of reefs had been totally obliterated. With a few notable exceptions, marine life was nonexistent."
Disappointed divers on the ship suggested names like Dresden, Hiroshima and Ground Zero for some of the sites.
Mr. Deknatel said that possible causes of the destruction included dynamite and cyanide fishing, infestation by the coral-eating crown of thorns starfish and sediment runoff due to logging on some islands.
But the prime suspect was the use of explosives and sodium cyanide poison to kill or stun reef fish so that they could be caught quickly in large quantities.
"Several large factory fishing boats from countries outside Indonesia are suspected of using dynamite and cyanide to decimate the reefs," Mr. Deknatel reported at the time. "Such boats have been observed in the area, but it was not possible to determine their country of origin."
Although now illegal in most Southeast Asian countries, use of explosives for fishing in the region dates back to World War II, when surplus ammunition became widely available.
Application of liquid cyanide, mainly by divers using plastic squirt bottles, to stun large fish such as wrasse, groper and cod so that they can be pried from holes and crevices in reefs, is a more recent innovation.
Such fish, when shipped live to Chinese seafood restaurants - in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Singapore and other countries in an increasingly affluent region - command prices many times higher than the same fish chilled, frozen or even farmed.
For example, a single Napoleon wrasse smuggled out of Indonesia, where its export has been illegal since 1995, can sell to eager seafood customers for over $5,000, including up to $245 for the lips alone, which are prized as a particular delicacy.
Robert Johannes, an American coral-reef ecologist based in Australia, estimates that the annual volume of reef fish caught live in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific and sold to seafood restaurants in the region is between 11,000 tons and 16,000 tons, worth at least several hundred million dollars.
"The fisheries that supply this market are creating a vast and expanding ecological tragedy that has gone largely unnoticed outside the region," he said. "The use of cyanide to catch live reef fish is most intensive in Indonesia and the Philippines. By unfortunate coincidence, these are the two countries whose waters also hold the world's greatest marine biological diversity."
LARGE fish destined for the restaurant trade are generally able to pass cyanide poison out of their systems when put in holding pens before shipment. The trouble is that while explosives damage sections of a reef, cyanide kills the smaller fish as well as the living coral, algae and invertebrates on which the fish population depends for survival.
"When a reef is destroyed by cyanide, a whole generation of local fishermen and villagers is being deprived of its main livelihood," said Rainer Sigel, publisher of Asian Diver in Singapore. "The food chain is destroyed from the bottom up, and that means it will take much longer to regenerate."
A survey by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences has estimated that 58 percent of Indonesia's coral reefs had been heavily damaged and 35 percent partly damaged, largely because of human activity.
Because the reefs provide vital shelter and breeding grounds for fish, and many of the poorest communities among Indonesia's population of 200 million depend heavily on fish for protein, the economic and social consequences of wholesale reef destruction could be devastating.
President Suharto recently appointed a number of his most senior officials, including the defense minister and the chief of armed forces, to a newly formed national maritime council.
Its main task is help protect the seas and reefs of Indonesia - a country comprising more than 17,000 islands.
"As the largest archipelagic state in the world, Indonesia's marine potential has not been fully utilized by its owners but exploited by others who have left only seven percent of our coral reefs in good condition," said Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, the environment minister. Scientists say that hundreds of tons of cyanide are being pumped each year into coral reefs in Indonesia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia.
BUT since Indonesia is so large and the trade in live reef fish so valuable, it is difficult to enforce the laws intended to control it. Local officials are either paid by organizers or middlemen to look the other way, or may even be partners in the business.Mark Erdmann, who spent two years studying the trade in Ujung Pandang on Sulawesi Island, one of the main collection points for live fish exports, said that in Indonesia, it was only illegal to use cyanide for capturing fish.
"Possession of cyanide on fishing vessels is permitted for 'tranquilizing' purposes," he said. "Legal loopholes such as this make enforcement virtually impossible."
Many of the cyanide divers come from poor communities in Indonesia. Mr. Erdmann estimated that those involved in the live trade were paid from $150 to $500 a month - as much as 10 times the average monthly salary of conventional fishermen and three times that of a university lecturer.
He said that there was a real danger the trade in its present form could cause "local over-exploitation, if not local extinction" of reef fish stocks in Indonesia.
Most experts say they believe that if the trade is to be effectively controlled, more marine parks must be established and local communities given a stake in their management and in the ownership and maintenance of traditional reef fishing grounds outside such protected areas.
"The live seafood business can be done on a sustainable basis using hand-lines or fish traps," said Helen Newman, a marine biologist who works closely with Operation Wallacea, an Indonesian organization dedicated to protecting coral reefs off southeast Sulawesi. "But without the support of local people, you've got no hope."
Mr. Johannes said that security of tenure provided an essential incentive for conservation of reef fishing grounds.
"To be more effective, however," he added, "local reef owners need government help in the form of supporting legislation education, assistance with enforcement, and legal agreements between reef owners and fishing companies."