Forty trainees of the Malaysian Armed Forces Defence College are in Mindanao, the Philippines, as part of their study tour of the Brunei Darussalam-Indonesia-Malaysia-Philippines East Asean Growth Area.
They were given an insight into the economic development of the sub-region as part of their course on international relations.
Led by MAFDC commandant First Admiral Datuk Tan Eng Seng, the delegation’s tour of Mindanao included a visit to the Mindanao Economic Development Council (MEDCo) for a briefing on Mindanao and BIMP-EAGA as a whole.
During the visit, Tan underscored the importance of security for sustainable development of a country and its neighbouring communities.
MEDCo chairman Virgilio Leyretana told the visitors about the need to secure the sub-region’s rich natural endowment, the Coral Triangle. Dubbed the world’s largest biodiversity site, the Coral Triangle spans Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste.
This tuna spawning area covers almost 650 million hectares, and holds the richest population of corals, fish, crustaceans marine plants, sea turtles and other marine species. Read the rest of this entry »
A diver swims near coral reefs teeming with fishes in Komodo islands, Indonesia, on April 30. About 100 million people risk losing homes and livelihoods unless drastic steps are taken to protect Southeast Asia’s biologically diverse coral reefs, which could be wiped out in coming decades because of climate change, a World Wildlife Fund report said May 13.
MANADO, Indonesia – About 100 million people risk losing their homes and livelihoods unless drastic steps are taken to protect Southeast Asia’s coral reefs, which could be wiped out in coming decades because of climate change, a report says.
The Coral Triangle – which spans Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and East Timor – accounts for a third of the world’s coral reefs and 35 percent of coral reef fish species.
If carbon emissions are not cut by 25 to 40 percent by the year 2020, higher ocean temperatures could kill off vast marine ecosystems and half the fish in them, according to the World Wildlife Fund, which warned that 100 million people earning a living off the sea could be forced to leave inundated coastlines and find new jobs.
The group, which presented its 220-page study at the World Ocean Conference in mid-May, cited 300 published scientific studies and 20 climate change experts.
“Decisive action must be taken immediately, or a major crisis will develop,” the report said.
“Hundreds of thousands of unique species, entire communities and societies will be in jeopardy,” it said.
Scientists have long warned that higher temperatures will melt polar ice and cause sea levels to rise, wiping out island communities and coastal ecosystems. Increasing carbon dioxide is also making oceans increasingly acidic, eroding sea shells, bleaching coral and killing other marine life.
But many questions remain about oceans – which also can play an important part in absorbing carbon – partly because the technology to study them is relatively new. Read the rest of this entry »
Practical hatchery training, Bali, Indonesia, 2006 Source: Shrimpdoctor.com
Government researchers have developed a hardier type of commercially farmed shrimp that is cheaper and faster to produce by crossbreeding local varieties with broodstock from the United States, officials said.
Indu Vannamei Nusantara I shrimp was developed by the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries’ research office in Situbondo, East Java, by combining vannamei broodstock from the US state of Florida with local varieties.
The first commercial IVN-I shrimp production was under way on Friday in two centers in Situbondo and Karangasem, Bali, to be distributed to domestic farmers.
Shrimp cultivation is one of the country’s most important fishery-related commodity sectors, with $690.3 million worth of exports flowing to the United States in 2007, or roughly 30 percent of total national shrimp exports of $2.3 billion. Read the rest of this entry »
Fishermen unloading a tuna catch at Bali's Jimbaran fishing village. Overfishing and abuse of the marine ecosystem are adversely affecting a vast region in South-east Asia known as the Coral Triangle. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Marine world faces collapse due to unbridled and destructive fishing
BANGKOK: – In the humid tropical dawn, the boats begin to arrive, unloading their plastic baskets of fish, shrimp, squid and crabs.
Wiry tattooed men sort them, working among slabs of gleaming ice. Many of the fish are still flipping about; the crabs are tightly bound with plastic string. They have been caught by the fishermen – or have come from trawlers lying offshore.
Steel hooks are used to drag the baskets up to the Mahachai market, where they join fat prawns from farms along the coast. Much of the landed catch is bought by seafood processors and restaurant owners; Mahachai feeds Thailand’s seafood industry and the voracious Bangkok market. Thailand is the world’s largest producer of canned seafood. Read the rest of this entry »
SW Pacific 2009 photographic evidence clearly shows algae in a green line between dead and healthy coral. (Source: John C Fairfax)
World Ocean Conference and Coral Triangle Initiative participants should urgently consider nutrient pollution is killing coral as photographic evidence indicates, not CO2 induced climate change. Wrong diagnosis can be fatal.
World Wildlife Fund and recent Indonesia CTI conference effort must focus on sanitation and proper sewage treatment to overcome nutrient pollution that is feeding algae that in turn is suffocating coral polyps.
Raw sewage is categorically being dumped in uncontrolled and unprecedented quantity into ocean food web nursery waters. Human sewage nutrients are adding to natural nutrient load, the total sometimes forming destructive nutrient pollution. Nutrients are bonded to fresh water that as fresher salt water is being transported in streaming patches within wind-driven ocean surface current. Coastal alongshore current is concentrating and streaming the dumped nutrients over vast distance to other waters, then sometimes nation to nation. Streams and clouds of fresher water with bonded nutrients in the ocean are travelling similar to how moisture clings together in streaks and patches of clouds blown by wind in the sky. The nutrients, like rain, are not always a problem. When heavily polluted fresher salt water saturates an area the over-supply of nutrients feeds and proliferate algae that smothers and kills coral and seagrass food web nursery. Read the rest of this entry »
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — Marine turtles are vanishing from Vietnam’s waters and illegal trade is largely to blame says a new study by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.
An assessment of the marine turtle trade in Vietnam, launched to mark World Turtle Day found that large marine turtles are now virtually absent from Viet Nam’s waters except for Green Turtles around the Con Dao Islands National Park.
A government-owned souvenir shop found selling illegal turtle products was a potent symbol of how a national ban on turtle products enacted in 2002 has been undermined by a lack of enforcement. Read the rest of this entry »
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — Marine turtles are vanishing from Vietnam’s waters and illegal trade is largely to blame says a new study by TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network.
An assessment of the marine turtle trade in Vietnam, launched to mark World Turtle Day found that large marine turtles are now virtually absent from Vietnam’s waters except for Green Turtles around the Con Dao Islands National Park.
A government-owned souvenir shop found selling illegal turtle products was a potent symbol of how a national ban on turtle products enacted in 2002 has been undermined by a lack of enforcement. Read the rest of this entry »
Ocean acidification is the name given to the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth’s oceans, caused by their uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Scientific data collected over many years are conclusive that oceanic absorption of atmospheric CO2 is causing chemical changes in seawater, making them more acidic (i.e. lowering pH). Increasing levels of anthropogenic CO2 are causing this process to accelerate. The average pH of the world’s oceans has dropped by about 0.1 pH units since the beginning of the industrial age. Being a logarithmic scale, this equates to increased acidity of about 30 per cent. Without deep and early reductions in global carbon emissions, oceanic uptake of anthropogenic carbon will result in a further drop of 0.3 to 0.7 pH units by the year 2100. The degree and rapidity of these changes in ocean chemistry have not occurred in millions of years. Read the rest of this entry »
Corals and mangrove grow at the protected Bunaken Island marine national park in Manado, photographed here May 14, 2006. Rising water temperatures, sea levels and acidity are threatening to destroy a vast region known as the Coral Triangle. (Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images)
JAKARTA, Indonesia — With the Indonesian government leading the way, six countries signed a landmark agreement over the weekend to conserve one of the most important marine communities in the world.
The Coral Triangle contains three-quarters of all known coral species on Earth but is under attack from over-fishing, destructive fishing techniques, pollution and climate change.
Moreover, 120 million people depend on the triangle’s bounty for their livelihoods, accounting for almost $2.5 billion in income every year. The Coral Triangle is roughly half the size of the United States and is now the subject of the largest marine conservation effort in history. Read the rest of this entry »
INCREASED shipments of prawns and other shellfish are expected to enter the UK this summer following a decision by the European Union to re-admit frozen seafood from Malaysia.
The country was suspended from sending fish nearly a year ago after they were suspended for failing to meet health standards. Fish exports from other Asian countries like Indonesia and Vietnam are already a common sight in British supermarkets and fish counters. Read the rest of this entry »
June 1, 2009 
Posted in Fisheries, News 
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