Indonesia Struggles to Protect Banggai Cardinalfish

Picture: Christian Zappel / Alamy

In an article by China Dialogue Ocean, Ari Syamsudin examines the struggle faced by Indonesia to protect the highly demanded Banggai cardinalfish.

People used to working primarily as clove and coconut planters began catching cardinalfish to boost their income. Requests for the fish began to arrive daily and residents would catch extra to allow for deaths in transit and animals rejected by buyers. Increasing demand drove increasingly extreme methods: Saleh says villagers started to use bombs, and not just swimming masks and nets, to stun and catch the fish.

Things got so bad that the fish was listed as endangered in 2007, with the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) saying it believed 900,000 were being caught every year for the aquarium trade. Protection measures were brought in and wild catching plummeted. But fishing for aquariums has not disappeared in the region, and the fish is still listed as endangered by the IUCN.

Erwin Dwiyana, director of marketing at the fisheries ministry, says Banggai cardinalfish is a protected species under ministerial decree, meaning catches are limited to certain areas and certain times. Where they occur naturally around the Banggai Islands, they can only be fished outside of their peak spawning period of February-March and October-November.

Concerns about the trade have not disappeared and some conservation groups want it to be banned.