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The manta ray — a valuable ocean
resource — is in drastic decline across Southeast Asia.
This week, in Thailand at the Conference of the Parties on the Convention
on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Indonesia has a
chance to vote on doing something to stop that decline. Brazil, Columbia
and Ecuador have proposed to add manta ray to the list of species protected
in international trade under CITES. We think Indonesia should vote “yes”.
Legally and economically, the proposal makes sense.
The giant manta ray is a majestic, highly migratory, ray native to
Indonesia. Once common, since 2011, the International Union for
Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has included mantas in their Red List of
threatened species as vulnerable to extinction. Fishermen are hunting
mantas mainly to supply China’s huge demand for their gill plates. These
gill plates are used in purported traditional medicines in China, Hong Kong
and Macau.
Indonesia is the world’s largest exporter of dried manta gills for Chinese
medicinal trade. Some estimates indicate Indonesia slaughters over 1,320 a
year for this trade, ranking just ahead of Sri Lanka (1,055), and almost
double that of India (690), which sits in third place according to a 2012
report by manta ray of Hope, a consortium of scientific experts and NGOs
working to protect the manta. Manta gill plates now sell for upward of Rp
240,000(US$24.7) per kilogram in Guangzhou, China, where 99 percent of the
market ends up. These high prices lead many fishermen and traders to seek
to supply the market, and many traders to work as “market-makers” to
further stimulate demand.
Legally, the manta proposal submitted to CITES makes sense, because it
tracks the recent moves in Indonesia itself and growing tenor of Asian consensus.
In February this year, Indonesian authorities announced a shark and manta
ray sanctuary in a 46,000 square kilometer zone in Raja Ampat, West Papua,
within the rich marine ecosystem of the Coral Triangle. Within the
sanctuary, shark and manta fishing is banned.
Among other countries, the Philippines has laws protecting mantas, and
prohibiting their slaughter and export. The Maldives also has a law banning
the export of manta products. And Sri Lanka has a law that requires export
permits for all fish, which should include mantas.
Further, in November 2011, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, the Philippines and
16 other countries, agreed to list the manta ray as covered by the
Convention on Migratory Species (CMS), which supports international
cooperation for the protection of migratory species amongst the nations
through which they migrate. These Asian countries agreed to try to
immediately protect the manta, and to work with other states to conclude
more detailed agreements for its conservation and management. Thus, further
manta protection laws should result.
Economically, although Indonesia is a large exporter of manta ray gill
plates, and the CITES proposal would restrict or eliminate their export,
the manta ray proposal also makes economic sense for two reasons. First,
Indonesia stands to gain from potentially astronomic tourism revenues.
Currently, Indonesian fisherman selling gill plates get cash amounting to
only about 20 percent of the retail sale value. More than 80 percent of the
profits go to the international traders and to the Chinese retailers.
Local fishermen get different cash prices depending upon the size of the
manta, with the average manta fetching the fisherman Rp 1 million — Rp 2
million. But in China, the gill plates of the same manta might get five
times that amount. Thus, the Indonesian manta ray population is being
locally decimated to enrich the pockets of foreign traders and retailers.
And the current high prices, are leading to exploitation of this hidden
resource at a rate that is entirely unsustainable and will lead to their
complete demise within years, like other similar species.
The Sri Lankan shark fishery, for example, declined by about 87 percent
from 2000 to 2008, from about 34,380 to 4,410 sharks, when they tried to meet
China’s demand for shark fins. How long until Indonesia’s manta rays suffer
the same decline?
Indonesia also stands to benefit from a CITES listing and later protecting
mantas at home because of tourism. If the estimated number of 1,320 dead
Indonesian mantas a year is correct, then the total annual value of these
mantas sold to China, is roughly Rp 2 billion — which may seem enormous.
However,
as nearby scuba diving resorts in the Maldives and Yap suggest — the
potential value of manta tourism is far greater.
In Yap, Micronesia, an entire tourism industry of Rp 40 billion annually is
based upon tourists coming to Yap to swim and dive with manta rays. In
Kona, Hawaii, the value of 100 tourists paying to dive or snorkel with
manta rays each night, amounts to Rp 500,000 each night and Rp 18 billion a
year. Although a range of other variables affect precise numbers, one thing
is clear — mantas draw scuba divers and snorkelers who pay big to see them.
Because manta rays are a migratory ocean species, it is not enough for
Indonesia to protect them. Indonesia needs to ensure other countries
protect mantas too. Otherwise, migrating mantas will be slaughtered when
they pass through other countries.
This would defeat Indonesia’s recent move to protect mantas in Raja Ampat.
Indonesia needs mantas to have a CITES listing to encourage other states to
do the same, and ensure other states establish a permit trading system for
manta parts. At CITES, Indonesia would be smart to care about a fish, and
right, to vote yes, for the giant manta ray. ●
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