Komodo Watch
October
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1999 Award
Helen Fox is the 1999 ISRS/CMC Coral Reef Fellowship
Recipient
The International Society for
Reef Studies and the Center for Marine Conservation announced today that
their 1999 Coral Reef Fellowship Award was made to Helen Fox, University of
California, Berkeley. Ms. Fox will work in Indonesia's Komodo National Park
where she will assess damage to coral reefs from dynamite fishing, also
known as "blast" fishing. She will assess factors that affect
recovery of blast sites and she will develop methods to help accelerate
recovery of coral reefs damaged by this destructive fishing practice. It is
well known that blast fishing causes widespread and devastating damage to
coral reefs. Despite being illegal, blast fishing is reported to cause
significant reef degradation throughout the South Pacific. Specifically, Ms.
Fox will: 1) evaluate how coral cover at various spatial scales correlates
with recruitment; 2) determine how rubble produced at the blast sites
affects coral recruitment in various flow regimes; 3) manipulate substrate
stability and rugosity to evaluate their effects on coral recruitment rates;
and 4) construct successionals trends based on changes in community
composition by comparing blast sites of known age with nearby unblasted
sites. Komodo National Park is located in eastern Indonesia and includes
areas where significant blast fishing previously occurred, but has declined
dramatically in recent years due to management efforts. This is the third
ISRS/CMC Fellowship award, with previous winners working in Belize and the
Philippines. The award is for one year and is worth $14,000.
Komodo Periscope -
November
Here is an update on what has
been happening in Komodo lately.
The Indonesian Navy have set
up a base in Labuanbajo in order to crackdown on illegal fishinf
practices such as dynamiting, cyanide fishing, etc. Over 50 arrests have
been made in the last few months. People from Sape, Ende and Sulawesi seem
to be the main offenders, but there was even a vessel from Madura
apprehended.
As far as the diving goes
there is a lot going on. The mantas are here in numbers and congregating in
south Komodo - up to 35 individuals at Manta Point on one dive ! Whale
sharks have been sighted at Gili Lawa Laut in the north and Gili Motang in
the south. Nine species of marine mammals have been identified recently:
rissos, melon-headed, spinner, spotted and bottlenose dolphins; minke and
sperm whales. Pygmy seahorses, giant frogfish and lacely scorpionfish have
been found regularly during the past few months. Mackeral are numerous and
many sailfish have been spotted at north Komodo. We discovered a new species
of worm living on the underside of the blue linka starfish.
I now wish to start a new
code of practice for all live-aboard vessels visiting Komodo as diver and
vessel anchor impact on some of the more popular sites is becoming very
evident. Bad management by operators is responsible for this and
photographers seem to be the main reef wreckers. Many of the sites are very
fragile and suffering. I plan to be in Bali on November 27th to try and get
everyone together on this issue.
Best regards,
Mark
Komodo dragon lures tourists,
conservation
Jakarta Post Features - November 09, 1999
By James Astill
KOMODO ISLAND, East Nusa
Tenggara (JP): The Komodo dragon, a 3 meter- long, occasionally man-eating
lizard seems an unlikely savior of coral reefs. But the reptile's
ability to draw the crowds may be the last hope for some of eastern
Indonesia's most precious marine environment.
Komodo National Park was
established in 1980 to protect the dragon, which is found only on three
dusty islands between Sumbawa and Flores. It also, incidentally, encloses
some extraordinary seas. Sustained by rushing currents where the Indian and
Pacific Oceans meet, the park is home to a staggering marine biodiversity.
To the north, coral reefs sparkle. To the south, manta rays and
filter-feeding whales glide through choppy, nutrient-rich waters.
But until the U.S.-based
non-governmental organization (NGO) The Nature Conservancy (TNC) got
involved in 1995, the park's status was precious little shield against
illegal dynamite and cyanide fishing, or plain over- fishing. Despite
the best efforts of the park authorities, the majority of the reefs
had been blasted or bleached and pelagic fish populations had slumped. TNC
put the brakes on this devastation with the help of the police and
armed forces by instituting the first park patrols. Later, it lobbied
successfully for a ban on crude hookah compressors -- which
allow divers to breath through a hose to a depths of 40 meters inside
the park's bounds. As a result, blast fishing has decreased by 80 percent
over the past year. But TNC knows well that unless it can offer local
communities solid financial alternatives, it might as well try
swimming against the park's treacherous currents."Tourism is
crucial. The National Parks will live or die on the strength of their
management's ability to woo visitors," says Rili Djohani, director of
its Coastal and Marine Program.
The tourist dollar has been
sought for conservation in so many ways, and with such varying degrees of
success, that the word "ecotourism" has become worn with
misuse. Only if revenues from nature-based holidays are pumped directly back
into the environment does the industry warrant its
"eco" prefix. But TNC is convinced it can pull this off in
Komodo. Its surveys consistently show that the dragon's pulling power
is quite sufficient to protect its island habitat and the surrounding
seas.Throw in some of the best diving in the world, wild horses on the
island of Rinca and the harsh, parched beauty of a hundred uninhabited
islands and it makes quite a
package.
Any development must be
carefully paced to check its impact on the local communities and their
natural resources. Exploitation of local labor and dried-up wells have no
place in ecotourism.To that end, TNC is brokering agreements between
investors, the Nusa Tenggara State Government and the national parks
administration to ensure responsible development of the adjoining coastline.
From a small field office in
Labuan Bajo, on the neighboring coast of Flores, TNC maintains detailed
monitoring of the park's flora and fauna - both terrestrial and
marine. Largely in recognition of this capacity, the navy signed a
pioneering agreement to cooperate with the NGO on enforcing the law against
destructive fishing. TNC will provide information on reef damage, and the
navy has pledged the muscle to bring offenders to book.
In addition, TNC has recently
begun to survey the area's whale and dolphin populations. With 13 species
already positively identified, it seems that the potential for
commercial whale-watching could well be another asset.
It is also working with local
communities to develop sound "sustainable" alternatives to the
fast buck earned by destructive fishing. Mariculture is central to
this effort. For the past two years, TNC has been collecting a brood stock
of those species, especially groupers, most sought after for the live reef
fish trade. Next, it will build a hatchery to supply local villagers with
fry, which they can rear in holding nets of their own and sell on. And if
foreign buyers can be enticed directly into the area by a regular supply of
high quality fish, the villagers could miss out the middlemen and see their
prices rise. At present, fishermen are paid a princely Rp 120,000 per
kilogram forlive mouse groupers which can sell for up to $150 per kilogram
in the restaurants of Hong Kong.
Most of TNC's target species
have already been farmed successfully in Taiwan and to a lesser degree in
Bali. Very simply, it is trying to replace one simple, effective and
potentially devastating piece of technology, the "hookah"
compressor, with a simple, effective and blissfully
sustainable alternative. But even as TNC battles to secure funding for
the project's next phase,alocal fish trader apes its best efforts. No more
than 20 meters from the brood stock pens is a smaller but identical
array of nets floated by large, plastic drums. These pens hold fish
bound directly for Hong Kong. Most will have been caught by cyanide
fishermen who first squirt poison into the reef, then rip away its coral
fronds to retrieve their stunned, half-dead quarry. It is estimated that for
every capture a square meter of coral reef is destroyed.
In the village of Seraya,
just north of the park, another cottage industry is burgeoning: fish
processing. Abdullah shows how low-grade tuna can be dried and preserved
into a sort of fish bouilli which quadruples its value.He is praying that
TNC can develop markets to keep track of the supply. Although he is
only 30, his painfully swollen joints -- the lasting effect of diving for
too long with a hookah compressor -- make it difficult for him even to
cast nets. He is afraid that a return to diving might kill him.
To the local communities,
these fledgling enterprises make sense of TNC's involvement in the park.
"Of course we knew that blast fishing was wrong," said a fisherman
of Komodo village. "But until very recently, we saw no other way."
TNC's groundwork is just beginning to bear fruit. It is devoutly wished that
the new government's focus on Indonesia's marine resources, for so long
robbed and abused, can help it flourish.
With little care, the
inhabitants of the Komodo area have lived alongside an aggressive,
predatory lizard for centuries. Their primitive wisdom may yet be the saving
of a beleaguered but precious area of land and sea.
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Komodo National Park
Balai Taman Nasional Komodo
Labuanbajo, Flores NTT Indonesia
Tel: 62.358.41004, 41005
Fax: 62.385.41006
E-mail : tnkomodo@indosat.net.id
The official website of The Komodo National Park: www.komodonationalpark.org
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