Malaysia Rapidly Losing Its Precious Coral Cover

 Firstly, the news:

 

 These headlines in a way confirms the underwater trend that has been happening in recent times.

 

I have been monitoring these trends out of fascination for sometime now since my underwater dive back then in 2014 in Pulau Redang, Terengganu. I recalled the coral forest back then was simply mesmerizing and certainly captivated my imagination till today. Though I've not been underwater in Terengganu waters in recent times, I do notice the consequence of what's happening underwater through soaring seafood prices in the market. Over the past decade the prices of local fish and seafood in general has soared. This is not solely due to inflation but also the result of diminishing supply of fish and ever increasing demand of seafood consumers.

 

Snorkeling around the Redang coral garden left me with a truly mesmerizing experience seeing brilliant colors of coral in Terengganu waters.

 

I even rarely find certain types of fish in the market these days like the ikan gelama and ikan lemoh which I love eating. And this phenomenon is not just constrained to the big city (KL). Believe it or not, but I can't even get locally sourced fish while I was in Kemaman, Terengganu (my home state) which is surprising given that Terengganu a coastal state whose traditional economy relies on the fishing industry, struggles to feed it's populace with locally harvested seafood (by local I mean caught by Terengganu fishing boats). All the stalls in the Kemaman market (Pasar Borong Dusun Nyior) except one, sells fish mainly sourced from Kuantan instead of Kemaman. That came as a surprise because as I've been buying seafood sourced from Kemaman all this while even dating back to the times of my late maternal grandfather. 

 

My late grandfather was spoiled by choice when buying seafood at the Kuala Kemaman fish market.
 

 The plentiful of seafood variety in the Kuala Kemaman fish market on any given day back then (this picture was taken back in 2010)

 

This phenomenon has several factors at play. Firstly, there's fewer manpower working in the fishing industry these days. As more and more older generation fisherman retire due to age catching up, there are not many younger generation fisherman replacing them. To start off with, the younger generation are not attracted to become fisherman as it is seen as not being rewarding despite the risk faced and hard work involved. Secondly, the fishing business as a whole is becoming less profitable as fish stock continue to shrink. Traditional fishing boats (like the ones that ply the Terengganu waters) need a certain amount of catch to cover the fuel and manpower expense of the vessel for every voyage out to sea. If they return with very little or no catch despite scouring the sea, then they lose money. With less fish stock in sea, the fishing business becomes more challenging. The success of a fishing voyage heavily relies on highly skilled tekong (boat captain) to pin point likely locations of catching schools of fish. To make matters worse, experienced tekongs are hard to come by these days as the older ones retire. This has forced industry players to hire experienced expat tekongs from Thailand which comes at a cost.

 

 Comparison of healthy coral reefs (multitude of brilliant colors) vs bleached coral reefs (all whitish)

 

Back to the related topic of depleting coral cover. This is not a local phenomenon as we also hear of similar news like this all over the world. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia has also lost almost half of its coral cover over the years. All this is attributed to the effects of climate change or rather global warming. As global temperatures rise, so does the seawater temperature. And when seawater temperature rises above a certain threshold for a prolonged period, the algae (zooxanthellae) that lives in the coral dies which eventually causes the coral to bleach (loses its colorful lustre) and die. When corals die, so does the ecosystems that surround it. This explains why there's less fish stock in the sea these days which leads to soaring seafood prices in the market as I have observed. This is certainly not an easy trend to reverse as it involves a coordinated global effort to mitigate climate change and global warming. Until humankind gets its act together, we'll probably have to get used to seeing more of this kind of news in the near future.