South Pacific Commission LIVE REEF FISH

There has been a major upswing in support for measures to put the live reef fish trade on a sustainable basis. WWF, TNC, IMA, USAID, ADB, NACA, WRI and a variety of other acronymous NGOs and aid agencies have thrown their support behind the effort, and this publication continues to describe their work. But how successful are we? We know that a few battles have been won at local levels, such as the line fishing cooperative at Canipo Island in the Philippines (see Barber & Pratt, p. 26). But we have no idea if we are winning or losing the overall war. A major problem is the difficulty of get-ting good statistics. The biggest gap in our statistics is our almost total ignorance of the trade in China. Hong Kong importers say that mainland China is presently vying with Hong Kong as the biggest importer of live reef fish in the world, but we have no statistic