KOTA KINABALU: The Sabah Anglers Association (SAA) yesterday expressed concern over the depleting fish stocks in the South China Sea due to overfishing.
Its president, Datuk Wilfred Lingham, believed that the South China Sea is the most over-fished sea in the world as it is surrounded by billions of population.
“The fish stock (in the South China Sea) is very much depleted,” he lamented.
In Sabah, Wilfred pointed out three main fishing methods that contribute to overfishing were trawlers, whereby up to 1,000 of them were operating in the State, the use of ‘bagang’ and longlining.
Bagang is a fishing method in which raised platforms are built on the sea with nets underneath.
Longline fishing, as the name implies, uses a long line with baited hooks attached at intervals. According to Wilfred, these lines can stretch up to four kilometres in the ocean with thousands of hooks attached.
He said anything that took the baits would be taken in, including sharks and turtles.
Wilfred believed there are about 40 longliners operating in Sabah waters. He said the licensees of longliners were Sabahans, but foreigners, mostly Vietnamese, were engaged to run the operation.
“There is a lot of gossip among the fishing community that the fish longliners catch are not supplied to our markets. They have mother ships waiting at international waters and they send the good fish there, while Sabahans eat class-three fish.
“I have personally seen a (mother) ship in international waters,” he claimed.
Nonetheless, Wilfred believed that the government, especially the Fisheries Department, was working on putting in place certain restrictions.
“There should be certain areas zoned as no fishing or seasonal fishing areas, which we strongly support. Other countries around us are already putting that into practice,” he said.
Wilfred added he had recently met with the new director of Fisheries Department, Dr Ahemad Sade, and their discussion centred around overfishing and other issues.
Even with enforcement in place, he said the ocean is too wide to enforce sanctions on illegal fishing activities like fish bombing.
Nonetheless, he said the maritime authorities had developed a technology to detect fish bombing using satellite.
He also raised the issue of rampant fish poisoning using cyanide, adding that it not only destroyed young fish, but also their habitats and corals.
Wilfred further urged the relevant authority to list formalin as a controlled item so that it would be easier to control the importation and sale of the solution.
“I would say around 80 per cent of the fish in the market is formalin-tainted.
“Can you imagine those (fish) in the interior? To transport the fish and sell it at tamus, they would just dump formalin (on the fish).”
He said formalin is even sold in sundry shops near the seafront.
As formalin is hard to detect once the solution is absorbed into the flesh of a fish, Wilfred said the easiest way to curb the use of formalin in seafood is to control its importation and sale.