‘‘Eating tourism’’ takes a toll in the Coral Triangle. Reef fish swim near Papua New Guinea.

By JENNIFER PINKOWSKI


KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia - The fierce appetite for live reef fish across Southeast Asia - and increasingly in mainland China - is devastating populations in the Coral Triangle, a protected marine region home to the world’s richest ocean diversity, according to a recent report in the scientific journal Conservation Biology. Spawning of reef fish in this area, which supports 75 percent of all known coral species in the world, has declined 79 percent over the past 5 to 20 years, depending on location, according to the report.

Overfishing in general, and particularly of spawning aggregations that occur when certain species of reef fish gather in one place in great numbers to reproduce, may be the culprit, says Yvonne Sadovy, a biologist at the University of Hong Kong who wrote the report along with scientists from Australia, Hong Kong, Palau and the United States.

She said the report’s conclusions were based on the first global database on the occurrence, history and management of spawning aggregations. It includes data from 29 countries or territories.

“The Coral Triangle has relatively few spawning aggregations reported in the communities we went to,”Dr.Sadovy wrote in an e-mail message.“We think that this might be due to the more heavily fished (overall) condition of reef fisheries in many parts of the Coral Triangle, where there is uncontrolled fishing and high demand for live groupers for the international live fish trade.”About one-third of the species mentioned in the report are sold in Asian markets.

Since the 1980s, Hong Kong has been the epicenter of the live fish trade. That trade has greatly expanded in the last decade to an $810 million business, according to the Worldwide Fund for Nature, which monitors the market. The fund works to manage the Coral Triangle with the six countries that share its seas - Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Solomon Islands and East Timor.

Rising wealth in mainland China may be a contributing factor to the increase in the trade with the demand for exotic fish especially high in Shanghai and Beijing. Destinations popular with Chinese tourists, where fish are cheaper, are seeing an increase, too. Malays at the famous Night Market here speak with awe about the Chinese tourists who spend“a thousand ringgits a week just eating fish.”That’s about $280.

Dr.Sadovy suggested that spawning aggregations be considered protected events rather than simply times when fish are easy to catch.“Special feeding or breeding places are now routinely protected on land for many species, because of the recognition that animals are vulnerable at this time or that their aggregated state is very important for their biology.”