Coral Triangle Initiative | Secretariat

In the landmark report ‘Reefs at Risk in Southeast Asia’, the World Resources Institute estimates that 88% of Southeast Asia’s reefs are threatened.

Among the various types of threats, over-fishing and destructive fishing are the most pervasive. Another key threat is the increased frequency of mass coral bleaching events. We only begin to understand the importance of this phenomenon, which is related to climate change.

Over-fishing means that fishers extract more fish than nature can produce over the long term. Besides decreasing the profitability and long-term prospects of the fisheries sector, over-fishing results in the extirpation of highly-valued species such as grouper and Napoleon wrasse. Fisheries experts from Indonesia find that the large majority of Indonesia’s fisheries are over- or fully exploited, which means that any expansion of the fishing fleet is ill-advised. Sadly, over-fishing is exacerbated by perverse subsidies that enable the fishing sector to continue fishing already over-exploited stocks.