A few moments later, dazed fish start to emerge. Up to 90 per cent of these fish are overcome by the clouds of cyanide and they die or are permanently injured. The rest are sold to dealers who take them to live-fish restaurants and tropical aquariums. It is like cocaine, says one Hong Kong fish-seller. With fleets from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Philippines carrying drums of cyanide, this is big business.
Huge money is involved, attracting some bad people.
The cyanide which makes it possible to deliver live fish to traders also leaves dead coral in its wake. As the first country to start using cyanide, the Philippines now have vast areas of devastated coral reefs. Three thousand fishers squirt tens of millions of coral heads a year. Destruction of coral has reduced fish habitat and stocks so drastically that many small-scale Filipino fishers have seen their daily catch drop by half. The use of cyanide also causes human deaths locals who eat fish brought home in bags that once held cyanide, fishers who swim through clouds of poison and those with poor diving equipment who get the bends.