Depletion of fish source has made headlines. Article below taken from The Sunday Star dated 3 June 2007. Time for even anglers to monitor own take.
Fishermen blame pollution for depleting fish population
By LOONG MENG YEE, EDDIE CHUA and NIK KHUSAIRI IBRAHIM
KUALA SELANGOR: Fisherman Koh Har Tiong loved the sea for various reasons – the fresh breeze and its vastness. He also loved it for the bountiful fish it provided.
That was 10 years ago.
Now, he is thankful if he can get 10 barrels of fish each time he goes out to sea, a far cry from the 30 barrels he used to haul in then.
And the blue seawater has now turned murky, grey, smelly and lifeless.
Not only is there less fish to catch, even the fish in his net are smaller.
He blames pollution and the cutting down of mangrove trees as the reasons why the number of fish in the sea is getting smaller.
“My house is just beside the river. A decade ago, the water was so clear we could see the bottom.
“There were many fishes, crabs and prawns. We could catch them with our eyes closed,” Koh, from Kampung Sasaran here, said.
Koh, 31, and his fellow villagers have watched the river die. They claim that upstream factories released effluents into the river while the mangroves along the banks of the river were chopped down.
Rubbish started to float around as irresponsible people used the sea as a convenient dumping ground.
“The chemicals polluted the sea and destroyed the seabed. When you damage the mangroves and the seabed, you kill the fish because they have no place to lay their eggs and find food,” said Koh.
Local freshwater and marine fish expert Prof Mohd Azmi Ambak said that in the last 50 years, some 20 species of freshwater fish had become extinct.
Local fishermen, he said, were finding it hard to catch once common and abundant species such as the red and golden snapper.
“Freshwater species such as seluang jalur emas, lias puteh, keli hutan and keli limbat as well as marine fish such as the telakai (short fin eel), ikan lelauh minyak (seven finger threadfin) and terubuk bengkalis can no longer be found in local rivers and seas,” he said.
Dr Mohd Azmi called for better marine management, saying that at the rate the seas and rivers were being abused, Malaysians might not be able to find their favourite fish on their dinner tables in just a few years
Koh agreed that some fish had become rare and were no longer seen.
“An example is the lai liew har (mantis prawn). A decade ago, it was considered an inferior type of seafood and nobody bought them.
“Now, they are highly sought after. Unfortunately, they are difficult to catch because they are hard to find at sea,” he said.
Former fisherman Ng Hwa, 54, said the mudflats in and around Kampung Sasaran smelled bad because they were strewn with rotting rubbish.
Like Koh, he blamed the discharge of waste from factories upstream.
“Plastic is the worst. You throw them into the sea and they remain there for a hundred years,” he said.
He said pollution caused the number of fish such as belanak (mullet) and tau tai (pomfret) and sai tou (wolf herring or ikan parang in Malay) to dwindle.
