Rarotonga (Cook Islands): Asia's demand for live fish is severely depleting fish stocks and causing destruction of reefs throughout the Pacific, environmentalists warn.

Conservation officials attending an environment meeting say demand for live reef fish in Hong Kong and other Asian markets is increasing, while Asian sources of fish are declining as a result of over fishing.

Cristina Balboa of the Washington-based World Resources Institute told the Pacific Ocean Sciences Fellowship here the volume of live fish taken by foreign fishing companies for sale in Asia has risen rapidly since the mid-1990s.

While Asian countries are estimated to consume up to 50,000 tons of live fish a year, the ornamental fish export trade for aquariums is also growing exponentially, Balboa said.

In 1971, just 200 species of ornamental fish were imported into the US. Two years ago, the number had jumped to 1,038 species, she said.

Throughout the Philippines and Indonesia cyanide poison has been used by fishermen because it is a quick and easy way to collect the targeted fish, which include groupers, coral trout and the humphead wrasse that command up to $ 40 per pound in Hong Kong.

But cyanide use is destructive, leaving dead fish and coral in its wake, said The Nature Conservancys Paul Lokani, who is based in Papua New Guinea.

The Marshall Islands and Palau are the only two Micronesian-area nations where cyanide use has been confirmed, Lokani said. Palau has now banned live reef fishing, but it continues in the Marshall Islands.

Since 1997, several atolls in the Marshall Islands are known to have cut deals with foreign fishermen involved in the live reef food fish trade.

"Live reef food fish operators have been sporadically active in the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Palau, and Papua New Guinea and have also been eyeing Vanuatu and Tonga," said the Hawaii-based International Marinelife Alliance vice-president Charles Barber.

"Some of these operators have failed, due in part to the relatively high costs of transport to the main markets in China, but others, such as the fishery in the Marshall Islands, are very active. And when one operator fails, another appears."

To overcome the costs of the distance that fishermen have to travel to deliver their product from distant Pacific islands, the live reef fishermen must fill their holds with catches in excess of 9,000 kilograms pounds.

This level of fishing in a small atoll can severely deplete fish stocks available for local consumption, say conservation officials.

The reality is that without adequate monitoring and supervision, there is no incentive for the foreign fishing vessels to develop sustainable fishing operations in the Marshall Islands and other countries, they say.

Barber said some companies have resorted to attempting to hide the source of their live reef fish catches in the Pacific, a fisheries version of money laundering because of the growing criticism over fishing methods and unsustainability of the fishery.

Two years ago, 45 per cent of the total live reef fish catch was reported as originating in Singapore, an area that has no reefs or significant fishery.

This may have to do with the size of the catch now being produced in order to meet the Hong Kong and Chinese market demand for live fish.

In 1997, an estimated 25 million fish with an average weight of slightly over two pounds each were exported to Asia, a large percentage coming from the Pacific.

"On the one hand, the live reef food fish trade is potentially a sustainable, low- volume, high-value fishery with significant potential to boost incomes in the Pacific Islands, if it is well-managed," said Barber.

"On the other hand, it has been an unsustainable and destructive fishery as practiced throughout much of Southeast Asia, and similar destructive practices have been documented in a number of Pacific Island nations."