Most of tsunami’s damage was caused by the shifting of coral rubble from Sri
Lanka’s 1998’s bleaching.-IUCN

Breakwater or breakdown?

GEA SWEE JEAN

Destructive practices

Fish habitats are suffering from destructive fishing methods. -IUCN

Bottom-set nets

Bottom-set nets are suspended vertically in the water using floaters on the water’s surface. Anchored to the seabed, the invisible walls they form snare fishes and other creatures indiscriminately.

These nets often snag on corals at the bottom, and the process of retrieving them rips out whole chunks of coral, destroying fish habitat.

Also, large pieces of net sometimes tear off, which can suffocate sea creatures that become entangled.

Moxy-nets

Moxy-nets are cone-shaped, and are constructed by floats at the water’s surface and weights around a base of about a metre wide or more. They are used on shallow coral reef tops, home to colourful ornamental fish.

With the net’s base secured around the reef top, fish are chased out of the reef and into the net by banging the corals with a stick.

Fish caught this way are severely stressed, and often die within the first few days of capture, as compared to fish caught by hand nets.

Blast fishing

Blast fishing, or dynamite fishing, uses explosives-filled bottles.

These explosives are dropped into the water from fishing boats, and the underwater explosion sends out a shock wave that kills marine creatures indiscriminately. Fish swim bladders are ruptured, causing them to float dead to the surface, where they are easily collected.

Each reef area is often blasted twice. The first blast kills the smaller fish; the second kills larger predators drawn by the carnage. In the process, corals become dead rubble.

Blast fishing is mostly illegal, but is practiced in more than thirty countries, including the US, China, Hong Kong, and the Philippines.

When the tsunami's waves pummeled Sri Lanka's coastline more than a year ago, little did we know that the coast had one natural barrier standing guard - the coral reefs.

After the tsunami it was reported that in places where the reefs were healthy, the land and its people suffered less, as the reefs bolstered the impact.

More than a year later, Sri Lanka has to cope with a slow but sure degradation of the natural resource that has been the main provider of the country's coastal communities for several decades.

Fishing, collection of ornamental fish and sea cucumbers for export, coral mining - these are the core activities that livelihoods in its coastal communities have been built around for decades.

But does the country have what it takes to strike the delicate balance between saving its natural resource, and maintaining these livelihoods, in these fragile post-tsunami days?

A bad record

To be sure, the reefs were unhealthy even before the tsunami.

Sri Lanka's history of coral reef damage is not pretty, to say the least. Its reefs have been under severe pressure for the past three or four decades for a number of reasons.

The worst cause of damage is coral mining. This practice has been banned since 1983 but still persists today.

Another major problem is destructive fishing practices such as blast fishing, and the use of bottom-set nets and moxy-nets. These methods not only deplete fish stock at an alarming rate, but also destroy fish habitat.

Uncontrolled harvesting also contributes to the reefs' breakdown. Among the commonly harvested species are sea cucumbers, chanks, lobsters, as well as edible and ornamental fish.

Yet the reef damage is not all man-made.

In 1998 the worst case of coral bleaching occurred in the waters around Sri Lanka.

Coral bleaching is a natural phenomenon caused by abnormally high water temperatures, which "bleach" the colours out of corals, leaving them white.

In 1998, changes in Indian Ocean currents caused the rise in temperature, killing anywhere from 50% to 98% of the country's corals, and greatly weakening those that survived.

And in December 2004, the tsunami hit.

Rapid assessment

Findings from a rapid assessment of tsunami damage to coral reefs carried out in January last year revealed that damage was "highly varied" - some reefs were almost totally unaffected, while others were extremely damaged.