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Project Noah Nature School
This dead fishes are most likely Anchovies. They are mostly around 5-10 cm in size, silvery in colour. We saw a lot of them dead on the sea bottom during a dive, apparently due to dynamite fishing.
Dynamite fishing is an illegal method of fishing still used in some countries including Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. This method of fishing is highly destructive as it not only kills the fishes that the fisherman want to catch but also other reef fishes of no commercial values to the fisherman. Sometimes, turtles and even dugongs are killed indirectly as the loud explosion can be heard miles away and this could stunt and drown the marine mammals/reptiles which still need to surface to breath,
Spotted on Apr 27, 2016
Submitted on May 23, 2016
2 Comments
Yes, sayang indeed.
I have seen some similar methods to 'muro-ami' still being used around Cebu, but not in a big commercial way. It is just a few fishermen using nets to circle some fishes in the shallow reef, and then they just make splashes and noises to scare the fishes to swim into the nets and getting caught in them. I posted a video of that at my Facebook :
https://www.facebook.com/askkang/videos/...
Sumilon Island is now a Marine Protected Area and the reef has recovered a lot but still not many big fishes :(
Sayang. Are they still doing "muro-ami"? I recall that happening at the gorgeous reef at Sumilon Island back in the 80's and 90's.