[CPEO-MEF] MUNITIONS, GLOBAL: "Blast fishing: how abandoned ordnance is destroying coral reefs" in the Solomon Is; amd

[Lenny Siegel <LSiegel@cpeo.org>]

Blast fishing: how abandoned ordnance is destroying coral reefs
Fishing with explosives harvested from old munitions is a threat to coral reefs globally, education and support for alternative livelihoods are needed to tackle it.

by Kendra Dupuy and Linsey Cottrell
Conflict and Environmenta Observatory
September 8, 2021


Pacific island communities including Palau and the Solomon Islands, remain littered with explosive remnants of war from the Second World War. The conflict left a legacy of land, marine and coastal contamination with munitions containing unstable explosives and other toxic substances. Kendra Dupuy and Linsey Cottrell examine some of the environmental consequences of this contamination, which includes the harvesting of explosives for destructive blast fishing.

Palau experienced heavy fighting between US and Japanese forces during the Second World War, with an estimated 2,800 tonnes of ordnance dropped or fired across the islands. These explosive remnants of war (ERW) include sea mines and ordnance that either failed to detonate or was abandoned after the war. The remnants includes chemical agent munitions, and ERW contamination is spread across many of Palau’s 200+ islands. While the government of Palau recently created a centralised database with information on the location of ERW contamination, data collection is still ongoing and there is not yet a reliable estimate of how much contamination remains on the land or at sea.

The situation is similar in the Solomon Islands, with heavy ERW contamination mainly concentrated in six of its provinces, but information about the exact location and extent of contamination is limited. The Solomon Islands comprise more than 900 islands and many locals rely on subsistence farming and fishing. Because ERW are found both on land and at sea, they impact the daily lives and livelihoods of islanders.

…

For the entire blog, see
https://ceobs.org/blast-fishing-how-abandoned-ordnance-is-destroying-coral-reefs/

—

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director
Center for Public Environmental Oversight
A project of the Pacific Studies Center
LSiegel@cpeo.org
P.O. Box 998, Mountain View, CA 94042
Voice/Fax: 650-961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org
Author: DISTURBING THE WAR: The Inside Story of the Movement to Get Stanford University out of Southeast Asia - 1965–1975 (See http://a3mreunion.org)

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