At the sound of a muffled “boom”, the divers pause and look uneasily at each other and their divemaster. Luckily, the blast seems far enough for the group to continue exploring the colourful reef.
What is fish-bombing?
Bottles, usually containing a mix of ammonium nitrate fertiliser and petroleum, are fitted with a timed fuse and dropped into the water. The ensuing explosion kills or stuns fish, which are then scooped out of the water. It is also known as blast or dynamite fishing.
Fish-bombing is the stuff of nightmares for the diving industry in Sabah state, Malaysian Borneo. Not only does it put off the tourists, it also devastates marine life and endangers the fishers themselves.
Action to address the practice has been ongoing for at least 16 years across several Asian countries. In Sabah, this action has intensified in the last six years as tourism has become increasingly central to the state’s economy and coastal communities. Programs have been run by various concerned stakeholders and the government-led Anti-Fish Bombing Committee. As a result, there has been a decline in the practice in Sabah.
In March last year, Covid-19 abruptly shut down tourism in Sabah, cutting off this vital source of income and increasing food insecurity for local communities. So far, data shared with China Dialogue Ocean from former fish-bombing hotspot the Mantanani islands, as well as information from other monitored islands, indicate the illegal practice has not increased. But as the tourism drought continues, some fear desperate fishers will return or resort to fish-bombing and other unsustainable practices. In its 2020 report on fish-bombing in Mantanani, the NGO Reef Check Malaysia sounded a warning note: “The impact of the pandemic on jobs reliant on tourism will contribute to community members becoming fish bombers again.”
Data can inform enforcement
Several programs monitor fish-bombing in Sabah. They use detectors to record information such as blast location, time and size. The data is then analysed and shared with relevant agencies, enabling a more targeted approach to enforcement.
One of these programs involves the Hong Kong-based Oceanway Corporation. It has been supplying detectors and analysing data in Sabah since 2005, and intensively since 2014 in tandem with non-profit The Reef Defenders and local NGOs.
“Generally the activity has reduced in Sabah during the Covid-19 period,” said Paul Hodgson, Oceanway’s director.
Local NGOs are putting this down to an increased presence of enforcement agencies. Malaysia’s border controls to rein in Covid-19 have been strict, particularly in Sabah where pandemic deaths currently make up about a third of the country’s total. The state is located very close to the Philippines, and in normal times people move regularly between the two countries.
“There has been an increase of navy and Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency patrol ships near the borders. I think their presence has reduced fish-bombing activities,” said Dr. Achier Chung, lead marine biologist with Reef Guardian.
The NGO manages reefs in the Sugud Islands Marine Conservation Area off Sabah’s northeast coast. It implements an effective monitoring and enforcement strategy based on data from blast detectors and a radar tracking system otherwise used for border control purposes. The three islands in the privately run protected area have no permanent inhabitants; but illegal fishers come from the mainland and the Philippines.
Chung said the NGO has wildlife wardens who patrol the waters with the assistance of police, and apprehend encroachers. In the five years between 2014 and 2019, they had reduced the number of fish-bombing incidents from 49 per day to less than 10, she said.
Meanwhile, on Sabah’s west coast, a fish-bombing response plan is being developed for a much larger area. The Tun Mustapha Park covers more than 50 islands across nearly 9,000 square kilometres. It is the state’s newest and largest marine park and has its second highest coral concentration.
As a multiple-use conservation area, its fishing grounds support the livelihoods of about 85,000 people, said Joannie Jomitol of WWF-Malaysia.
Fish-bombing has been practised there for generations and “destroys coral habitats,” she added. “Healthy coral habitats support better livelihoods for coastal communities . . . and can withstand inevitable climate change impacts such as coral bleaching.”
Fish-bomb detectors were installed throughout the park two years ago by a government-led multi-stakeholder task force including WWF-Malaysia. The detectors have yielded nine months of baseline data, which is being fed into the park’s response plan.
Jomitol believes the effort to end fish-bombing needs everyone to be involved.
Communication is a key part of this, she said. “How are we going to frame this fish-bombing messaging so that it will build awareness and enable the public to take informed actions about it?”
Involving the community
It is critical that local people see the connection between sustainable fishing and better livelihoods. During a 2018 dialogue with local fishers, Fazrullah Abdul Razak of Sabah Parks emphasized the importance of protecting habitats and biodiversity conservation for food security and human wellbeing.
Including local people in sustainable marine resource programs has become even more important in the face of pandemic-related lockdowns and economic hardship.
“We believe that the community is part of the solution and [are] our coastal frontliners,” said Tommy Cheo of WWF-Malaysia.
Cheo works in Semporna, a district on Sabah’s southeast coast whose waters contain the largest coral concentration in Malaysia. Semporna is also home to one of Sabah’s largest fisher communities and two marine parks.
Cheo said island communities in the district have been provided with training and resources to help manage their marine resources sustainably through “locally managed marine areas, and indigenous and community conserved areas”. Cheo believes this approach has helped local people find alternatives to fish-bombing.
Hodgson from Oceanway agrees, but added: “You need to look further than the fish-bombing . . . You see, the bombing is an indicator of the other illegal activity happening in an area. With the major effort seemingly targeting just this activity in the small-scale grassroots local fishing community, most other illegal, unreported and unregulated [IUU] fishing has probably increased in some areas. Especially with the larger-scale fishers.”
China Dialogue Ocean was unable to verify increases in other IUU fishing in Sabah with government agencies or NGOs.
Hodgson said: “In areas where we see massive reductions in fish bombing – like more than 90 percent – one would expect an increase in fish populations. Well, this doesn’t happen in most areas. What we see happen is an increase in electric and other IUU fishing.”
According to Reef Check Malaysia’s 2019 Status of Coral Reefs in Malaysia report, populations of high-value species such as grouper and shellfish are not recovering well from past overfishing, while live coral cover declined between 2015 and 2019.
The report mentions fish-bombing as a threat in all seven sites surveyed in Sabah, along with unregulated tourism and lack of waste management. But monitoring is not easy. In the Semporna area, WWF-Malaysia’s Cheo said detectors have been stolen in the past, with another destroyed by a blast.
“WWF-Malaysia do not own enough detectors to monitor the whole of Semporna, and there is still a huge gap for monitoring,” he added.
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