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Originally Posted by Basile  Hey, guys, reading this thread and i'm lost. excuse the ignorance, but where would the cyanide come from? Am i confusing potassium cyanide. Please explain if you have time. Totally in the dark with this phenomenon.  |
Generally I believe sodium cyanide is used. It is put in little squirt bottles, when the divers chase a fish into the reef they squirt a little bit of cyanide stunning the fish while killing the coral head. The fish floats out and gets bagged.
The issues are obvious, coral dies, fish may or may not "wake up," and fish that do survive suffer long term issues.
The cyanide comes from the people that buy the fish from the collectors and sell it to transhippers or wholesalers.
Educating collectors on proper collection methods and ensuring they get paid fair prices for collecting healthy fish in sustainable manners are current projects in the indo pacific areas. Properly training and providing material to net capture fish is currently being done by several people.
My best advice, is to educate yourself on what areas provide healthy sustainably captured fish and support those fisheries by purchasing fish from them, buy from educated retailers, spend a little extra to support them. As long as cyanide use is profitable it will continue.