‘Reef Sales’: an investigation into the global tropical fish trade
After a month-long investigation into the opaque trade in tropical aquarium fish, Nathalie Bertrams and I published features and photostory for Süddeutsche Zeitung, Tages-Anzeiger, De Groene Amsterdammer, MO*, and for BBC News. Our stories highlighted both environmental issues and social problems facing people supplying the trade. The investigation also highlighted ways the tropical fish trade promotes unsustainable or illegal practices in Africa and Asia. It showed how illegal cyanide fishing, coral smuggling and overharvesting are harming the coral reef ecology.
Made possible with the kind support of:
Fonds Bijzondere Projecten
Free Press Unlimited
Robert Bosch Foundation - Reporters in the Field
Internews’ Earth Journalism Network
The articles on the global fish and coral trade were published in German, Swiss, Dutch, Belgian and British media, and shared over 3,300 times on social media.
Our article in De Groene Amsterdammer led two Dutch Members of Parliament to write to Government Ministers seeking answers to ten questions about the sustainability and legality of the trade in corals and fish from tropical seas to the Netherlands.
Environmental news agencies and animal rights associations that have shared and discussed the investigation include Green Echoes, German animal rights association Tier im Recht and the German Reference Centre for Ethics in the Life Sciences (DRZE) and Swiss animal rights organisation Fair Fish.
The Swiss Underwater Sports Association (SUSV) reprinted the Süddeutsche Zeitung article in its magazine.
Read the article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany).
Balinese fisherman hunting for ornamental fish. Photo credit: Ingrid Gercama.
Bajau fisherman in Indonesia who lost his arm because of using dynamite for fishing. Photocredit: Nathalie Bertrams.
The story was published in Dutch in De Groene Amsterdammer.
"After the ban, I lost everything," says Agus Joko Supriyatno. "It cost me my house and my health."
For years, the 52-year-old made his living as a cultivator of sustainable, farmed coral just off the coast of Nusa Lembongan, a small island near Bali.
But when the Indonesian government banned all coral exports in 2018 to stop illegal harvesting of wild coral, hundreds of farms across the country collapsed.
Mr Supriyatno had been supplying hundreds of pieces of coral per week to aquarium shops in Europe and China, where they are used in fish tanks for decoration. But his underwater farm went bust, and he ended up suffering a stroke, which he says was caused by the stress.
Read the story - with Nathalie Bertrams - for BBC News, here.