As someone who loves the Bahamas, is a commercial diver and has participated in the live tropical fish trade for 28 years I was horrified to learn that officials from the Bahamian government have agreed to allow a Korean company to invade your precious reefs with Cyanide.
The devastation that will follow is beyond description and will cause even more damage than the practice of using bleach. Cyanide fishing is one of the most destructive and wasteful ways to harvest fish. The only fishing method I can think of that rivals Cyanide is dynamite fishing.
With Cyanide mortality is very high and collateral damage cannot be overestimated. Imagine swimming along a formerly lovely Bahamian reef and finding large sections of it completely dead – no fish, no live coral, no live sponges. Imagine every single fish and invertebrate in an area being killedﾅevery one, from the biggest grouper to the tiniest damsel. The diver doing the collecting will resemble Halley’s Comet in that behind him drifting in the current will be a comet’s tail of dead and dying reef organisms.
This is no exaggeration. Using Cyanide is a destructive, greedy and lazy way to fish and injects into the food fish market a product that has been “treated” with Cyanide. The number of fish that do survive for this live fish trade is a tiny percentage of the total affected. Imagine on a single application the killing of thousands of royal grammas, hundreds of grunt, parrots, damsels, surgeons, hogfish, angels, shrimp, crabs, coral and a thousand other species that live in the crevasses of your reefs. This is what is about to be unleashed in your islands. It is unacceptable.
In the tropical fish industry Cyanide is a dirty word because for many years divers in the Philippines have destroyed large sections of their reefs using Cyanide compounds to stun and collect fish. Most die and many of those that do survive shrivel away and die in the home aquarium, the result of being poisoned. To my knowledge there is no country in the Americas that has been so foolish as to allow this horrible fishing method in their watersﾅ..until now. The Marine Aquarium Council, an international organization that works with fisheries around the world to promote safe fishing practices, condemns the use of Cyanide and has worked hard for many years to eradicate it’s use in the collection of tropical fish. Their web site outlines many of their programs. The Bahamian government should follow their lead.
It’s ill advised to do anything that destroys your environment and right now the economic future of the islands hangs in the balance. Your one true unique, renewable and forever profitable resource is the natural, unspoiled beauty and marine life of the Bahamas. Destroying it for a quick and very short-lived buck will ultimately condemn the Bahamas biologically to being another Haiti. No one will want to come here when it’s all gone. Already word of the Cyanide issue is spreading to the US and to Europe. It will not be long before the diving magazines and other publications highlight the Cyanide and, particularly from Europe where sound environmentalism as a policy is very strong, you will see a reduction in the number of tourist divers. Economically this a very distressing possibility.
Recent articles suggest that it may not now be legally feasible to rescind the permits for the Korean fishing operation. Whether or not this is true the Bahamian government should enact immediately a law that prohibits the dispensing of any Cyanide based fishing aids in the waters of the Bahamas and include very stiff penalties for violations, including forfeiture of boats, all related fishing equipment, loss of catch, jail time and, where applicable, deportation. The rich waters of the Bahamas are God’s gift to it’s people and to the world as a whole. Squandering it is a crime against everyone.
Sincerely,
Bill Parks
