only 5% of sold fish are cyanide collected.

[Kalkbreath]

Oh my God,
Have we been failing that long?
I spent the first year on this issue actually training and have been trying to get back to it ever since.
Look how long alarm was sounded on the food fish thing!
Sad to say it was used as a blueprint to pave the way for Filipino concerns to take over the cyanide food fish industry from Chinese ones.
Steve

I found the quote in question..........Steve , how about you post your manuscript on live reef fish collection {1984} {1983} And explain yourself?

 

[clarionreef]

Huh? :roll: 8O
Steve
PS.What manuscript?
The live food memo to BFAR or what?

 

[Anonymous]

If you found it, post it, along with a link so we may read it as well.

 

[Kalkbreath]

Huh? :roll: 8O
Steve
PS.What manuscript?
The live food memo to BFAR or what?

The publication where you used the word exclusively to describe the food fishing industry and their extent of cyanide use. You submitted it to a certain magazine... ring a bell?

 

[PeterIMA]

Kalk, Steve wrote a memorandum to the Philippine Department of Agriculture in 1986 concerning the live food fish trade. He never submitted any of this information to any magazine that I know of. It has not have been posted on any web site that I know of. I am the only one who has used information from it (e.g., the statement that ten 100 foot live food fish vessels fishing off of Palawan were each using 1250 kg of sodium cyanide every two weeks is derived from this confidential memorandum).

Kalk, if you have a copy of the memorandum, then you quote from it.

 

[clarionreef]

Kalk...
Huh? :roll:
The word exclusively was used :?:
My goodness :!:
Your cryptic inference implies something I have no clue of. [In this respect we are of one mind.]
I wrote a lot of stuff back then.
However...I await to become enlightened.
Steve

 

[mkirda]

I found the quote in question..........Steve , how about you post your manuscript on live reef fish collection {1984} {1983} And explain yourself?

Kalk,

This is really the problem with your posts.

Having read Steve's articles from '83 and '84 in FAMA, I have to say that nowhere do they describe cyanide fishing as being exclusive to the food fish trade.

Giving an incomplete citation such as this is just wrong.
First, you claim that Peter 'quotes' Steve in his testimony.
When Peter provides the testimony to me, I find this just isn't true- In fact, it was blantantly FALSE.
You then wiggle and state that what Peter gave me (and I posted in quotes) was not what you were referring to.
That would mean that you are saying that Peter provided me with false testimony? Why the heck would he do that???

Now you change the story and claim it is in one of Steve's manuscripts from '83 or '84.
Again, this can be proven to be untrue, Kalk.
I still have the magazines (Thanks, DOUG!) and can easily show it to be untrue.
So unless you can provide a real citation (Magazine or Journal name, Volume, Issue, Title of article and page number(s)), you are just blowing more smoke.

 

[clarionreef]

Kalk,
Waynes been acting up!
He fails to relize that we are totally innocent and totally blameless! Can you imagine?
Why not represent our fine industry and go straighten him out?
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

Please cite your source Kalk, I have all those magazines as well. In fact, I have many of the crucial ones in .pdf format now. Lets see what you found.

 

[Kalkbreath]

The quote in questin ...........was Steve explaining the extent of cyanide use by the food fish trade of the time. Not that cyanide use is or was exclusive to food fish collection. " Exclusive" as to that cyanide is the sole tool for collection of live food fish. My point is that Steve, twenty+ years later wants to blame MO collection during the 1960 and 1970s as to why 70% of the reefs were killed off during those decades. Yet very few hobby fish were even collected then and from a very limited number of reefs. {not all from senior gonzalas} Steve and Peter keep pretending that the food fish industry is not responsible for 99% of the reef degradation by cyanide. Yet if someone looks at their writings from that time...........they were quite intent then on exposing the food fish industry and its almost 100% use of cyanide. Why have you all abandoned your efforts on stopping food fish cyanide use? If zero MO collection took place at a time when 90% of the reef destruction took place..................Then that would prove that MO collection was not at all responsible. Right? Well, a teeny tiny amount of hobby fish were collected during the years of 1960 and 1970s. But 500 times more food fish were collected during those same decades and according to Steve in his writings of 1984 all of the food fish werecollected with cyanide......................if only one fish out of every five hundred fish collected with cyanide in 1965 was a hobby fish ............then how can you continue to hold the hobby collectors from the 1960 responsible for the dead reefs?

 

[Anonymous]

The quote in questin ...........was Steve explaining the extent of cyanide use by the food fish trade of the time. Not that cyanide use is or was exclusive to food fish collection. " Exclusive" as to that cyanide is the sole tool for collection of live food fish. My point is that Steve, twenty+ years later wants to blame MO collection during the 1960 and 1970s as to why 70% of the reefs were killed off during those decades. Yet very few hobby fish were even collected then and from a very limited number of reefs. {not all from senior gonzalas} Steve and Peter keep pretending that the food fish industry is not responsible for 99% of the reef degradation by cyanide. Yet if someone looks at their writings from that time...........they were quite intent then on exposing the food fish industry and its almost 100% use of cyanide. Why have you all abandoned your efforts on stopping food fish cyanide use? If zero MO collection took place at a time when 90% of the reef destruction took place..................Then that would prove that MO collection was not at all responsible. Right? Well, a teeny tiny amount of hobby fish were collected during the years of 1960 and 1970s. But 500 times more food fish were collected during those same decades and according to Steve in his writings of 1984 all of the food fish werecollected with cyanide......................if only one fish out of every five hundred fish collected with cyanide in 1965 was a hobby fish ............then how can you continue to hold the hobby collectors from the 1960 responsible for the dead reefs?

it's quite apparent to me after reading peter's testimony to congress that he identifies the food fishing industry's cyanide problem as an issue unto itself

In 1983, Steve Robinson visited the Philippines where he lived at the village level and observed the widespread use of sodium cyanide for capturing marine ornamental fish for the marine aquarium trade. He witnessed, and documented in the aquarium hobby literature, the reef destruction, the poverty, and the reduction in daily harvest by small-scale fishermen. He noted that the average small-scale fisherman earned less than $25 (US) per month; on which they were trying to support an average family of 6 persons. With declining harvest of both food and aquarium fishes, they could barely feed their families. There was no longer much excess food fish to sell, in order to buy other commodities. In 1986, Steve discovered that sodium cyanide was also being used to capture live groupers and the Napoleon wrasse for export by air and by boat to Hong Kong and Taiwanese restaurants. A fleet of six 100 foot vessels was using 1,250 kilograms of cyanide per vessel every 15 days to capture 3-6 live metric tonnes of groupers. Cyanided (but intact) coral reefs were observed to be devoid of fish. Steve raised the alarm that the entire reef ecosystem was being decimated.

there is nothing in peter's testimony that attempts to place a percentage of the effects of cyanide damage to the reefs relative to either the MO, or food collection, industries

they are both simply indentified as being damaging, and that they should BOTH be stopped


why do you have a problem with stopping the one we most easily, from the MO biz side, can, before moving on to the food fishing industry ?

why does pursuing one, according to you, mean that the other will not be pursued ?


it would seem to me that demanding a cleanup of the food fishing industry would actually be made EASIER if we can clean our own house first, to show an example that it can be done :wink:

why are you so against this ?

p.s.- an entire reef ecosystem includes more than just the reef :wink:

 

[Kalkbreath]

I think the testimony Peter and Steve gave fifteen years earlier is what I am highlighting. At that time, The writings seemed to focus on food fishing. Yet in 1997 and today they both seem to solely focus on MO trade . If they understood then in 1985 that the food fish collection was responsible for 95% off the destruction. Why do they both today continue to dwell on the small five percent? What made them decide to change gears ? The fact that today they are attempting to place both MO and live food fish collection in the same boat so to speak ........is odd.? The testimony you highlighted, Peter is making reference to his complete works and he is attempting to compare the food fishermen's use of 16 tablets per squirt bottle to the Mo collectors three or four cyanide tablets . He states that although cyanide fishermen use much stronger cyanide concentrations {something he and all of you denied here for months}, MO fishermen discharge more quirts per day. So , MO fishermen actually destroy more habitat then food fishermen. But wait! What about the fact that many many more live food fish are collected each day as a whole ? Yes the average grouper collector collects fewer fish and thus less squirts . But there are fifty times more food fish collected each day? So there are more collectors collecting food fish . He is comparing the average single collector or boat when he should be comparing the average daily fish collected. With that data its plane to see that food fish squirts out number MO squirts fifty to one. Even more so in the 1960s when MO collection was only a few hundred thousand per year. Yet fifty percent of the reefs were killed off. The testimony in 1997 had a very much changed tone from the opinions in 1984 on the subject of cyanide on the reefs . Why ?

 

[clarionreef]

Kalk,
If you can walk and chew gum at the same time...you could understand the ability to work against cyanide fishing in both food and tropical fish industries...at the same time.
When I worked in the Philippines it was as a consultant. Anything that threatened reefs was fair game.
Today I no longer work as a consultant but as an aquarium fish importer...hence the focus is more on my own professions responsibility.
However...with that said....I'm proud to have been a thorn in the side of the cyanide food fish trade, muro ami and the dynamite fishing business.
I even wrote a documentary script on the combination of assaults on Philippine reef productivity.
The minister of Agriculture and fisheries back then labeled it; The peoples coral reefs; genocide against future generations.
If anything, this all proves a level headed and balanced approach to coral reef conservation that weighed all factors.
Thanks for bringing it up!
Steve

 

[PeterIMA]

Kalk, Steve and I were initially concerned about the use of sodium cyanide by the aquarium fish trade. Information obtained by Steve (and later myself) from Earl Kennedy was that the aquarium fish collectors started using cyanide in PI about 1962. Steve's memorandum written in 1986 indicates that food fish capture using cyanide in PI started about 1975. Rubec and Pratt (1984) documented the export volumes (in kilograms) of MO fish exported in the 1960's and 1970's. The MO export trade from PI during the 1970's grew largely because of the availability of cheap MO fish caught using cyanide. The IMA like Steve has been against both the food fish and aquarium fish trades use of cyanide. The IMA was the organization that organized conferences and found funding to start monitoring the food fish trades (starting about 1996). TNC (though Dr. Bob Johannes) also brought the issue of the food fish trade to world attention with its report in 1995. Nowhere in these reports (like Sullied Seas by IMA or the Johannes and Riepen TNC report) does it state that the use of cyanide by the food fish trade accounts for 95% of the reef destruction. You are right that more focus on cyanide use by the food fish trade is needed. We presently don't know what the relative use of cyanide is, or the relative proportion of reef destruction is between these trades.

We know that both trades contribute significantly to the destruction. My guess is that it is about 50% for each trade. In the food fish trade I include both the dead food fish and the live food fish trades. The first is for local consumption, the second for export of groupers and Napoleon wrasse to Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, and Japan.

 

[Kalkbreath]

Just how many fish were exported from 1962 to 1980? Even if every single fish was collected with cyanide, {actually 85% most likely were} Do you really think that the hobby had much impact? If so explain? Ninety percent of the fish collected during that twenty year period were collected within a very limited area of the 27,000 square kilometers of the reef system.Yet most of the reefs within the 27,000 square kilometers declined in health over 50%? I understand that food fishermen did not fully embrace cyanide until blast fishing was outlawed. The ability for cyanide fishermen to do so quietly was a big plus compared to blast fishing. And this new quiet fishing tool actually encouraged food fishing to an all time high in the early eighties. But whether it was food fishermen using dynamite or cyanide .......in the twenty years in which the reefs declined the most. It was still not our hobby. There were not enough fish collected for our aquariums during that time nor were the hobby fish collected from very many areas.[collecting oneplace does not kill the coral a thousand miles away} Fish and other seafood's are the principle sources of protein in the average Filipinos diet. According to Hunt (1996), fish make up 50% of protein intake of Filipinos. The annual per capita consumption of seafood's is about 70 pounds, twice the national average for the Southeast Asia region (Compton’s Reference, 1996). About 80% of the fish are consumed fresh. That means 70 million people are eating fish from the reefs collected daily. THATS 7,000,000,000 ....seven trillion pounds each year! With 25,000 square kilometers of reefs that works out to be 33,000 pounds per kilometer! And our hobby collects less then ONE pound! Thats a 33,000 times greater stressor. Yet you still to this day think aquarium fish collectors are "50-50" compared to food fish collection! Its insane!

 

[clarionreef]

kalk,
You need some new stories and a new advisor.
Whoever tells you the basic stuff is way off and you 'take it from there'.
I was merely shaking my head at the line by line errors til I got to the bottom...
Do you read the stuff you write? 33,000 lbs per square kilometer average...from every nearshore habitat with reefs in the whole country?! :roll:
Do you relize what that would mean if true?
Not only would many Filipinos become rich exporters of seafood...but hunger in S.E. Asia would decline tremendously.
If only these fantasies were true...
The main fish in the local diet are farmed milkfish [ chanos chanos] and a top swimming smelt-like fish called galungong, which is gill-netted and sometimes dynamited.
Niether one of them come from the reefs and the fact that they weigh so heaviliy into your exaggerations and extrapolations show how you reach conclusions.
Anyone can write this fiction if they like.
For example, there are 200 square kilometers of reef in the region off Bolinao, Pangasinan. [20 KILOMETERS LONG AND 10 OUT TO SEA] At 33,000 lbs per sq kilometer thats 6,600,000. lbs of fish from there each year!
Divided by 225 fisherman in the area thats 29,333 lbs of fish per man per year! Or 146 lbs of fish per fishing day @ 200 days per year!
Wow!
The people there are no longer poor by this math and in fact quite well to do!
If only Kalk-math were real. Its easy to but holds up no where unfortunately.
For serious flights of fantasy Kalk, stick to things that others are not familiar with. You could get away w/ it more.
OK, breaks over, back to work.
Steve

 

[Kalkbreath]

Then you do the math......seventy pounds per person ....times the number of people. I understand that not all of the "seafood" is from the sea. But I also understand that another 35 kilos of seafood is exported per person. so I think the farm raised milkfish and other aquacultured fish products would balance out the not from the sea portion. I dont think you have ever actually sat down and thought about how much self use food fish is collected each day in PI . I have pretty solid estimates that 70 pounds of seafood consumed{which includes freshwater} and 35 kilos of exported fish per capita. You explain how , when sixty percent of the population cant afford to purchase their dinner......and 80% of the food fishermen use cyanide,that these people are not also using cyanide for self use fish collection? The 1960s and 1970s were even harder on the people of PI then today .......dont tell me that they did not cyanide fish and dynamite their own reefs to hell and back during this period. Thats when and why their reefs are in the state they are today. You know it and you continually attempt to blame our hobby instead. Why dont you do some research on fish consumption of the Philippine people ....then you will find that only 30% of the fish consumption is aquaculture. and only ten percent during the 1960s. Those extra two thrillion pounds of fish per year came from somewhere. and it was not milkfish ponds..... :wink:

 

[PeterIMA]

Kalk, Almost everything you have stated in recent posts is wrong or a deliberate fabrication (lie). I don't have the time to debunk them now. More later.

Peter

 

[Anonymous]

Kalk, Almost everything you have stated in recent posts is wrong or a deliberate fabrication (lie). I don't have the time to debunk them now. More later.

Peter

'recent' posts ? :wink:

 

[mkirda]

I don't have the time to debunk them now.

Peter,

13 pages long, this assinine thread... Go back to the subject. Anyone who can read and do simple math can see that Kalk's premise is wrong, and that simple math with simple assumptions proved he was wrong.

It doesn't matter if you debunk Kalk-gibberish. In fact, I think it only adds fuel to the fire. Like a bad horror movie, he keeps coming back.
He makes up figures faster than you could possibly debunk them.
It's like playing Whack-a-Mole with an amphetamine-stoked Mole...

Maybe we should practice something straight out of the headlines...
Unilateral disengagement.

Regards.
Mike Kirda
P.S. Notice how he still refers to your testimony to Congress, but cannot come up with any reference whatsoever? Or 'quotes' Steve, but cannot find the relevent reference? Smoke. It is just more and more plumes of smoke, blown up the forum's rear.