Bomb fishing is wreaking havoc on Indonesia’s coral reefs

炸鱼活动正在摧毁印度尼西亚的珊瑚礁

Bomb Fishing Is Wreaking Havoc on Indonesia’s Coral Reefs. This article was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. 炸鱼活动正在摧毁印度尼西亚的珊瑚礁。本文最初由《气候内幕》（Inside Climate News）发表，现作为“气候台”（Climate Desk）合作项目的一部分在此转载。

Fishers operating off the coast of Sulawesi, Indonesia, are detonating more than 8,000 underwater explosives each year, researchers estimate. The practice is turning picturesque coral reefs to “rubble.” 研究人员估计，在印度尼西亚苏拉威西岛海岸作业的渔民每年引爆超过 8,000 枚水下爆炸物。这种行为正在将风景如画的珊瑚礁变成“瓦砾”。

Nicknamed the “Amazon of the Seas,” the Coral Triangle is the world’s most biologically diverse marine ecosystem. Sink below the surface and you’ll encounter the sound of a vibrant symphony of snapping shrimp, crunching crustaceans, and feeding fish. But then the rhythmic music of life will dissolve into eerie silence, punctured only by the plosive boom of detonating bombs. “珊瑚三角区”被称为“海洋中的亚马逊”，是世界上生物多样性最丰富的海洋生态系统。潜入水下，你会听到由枪虾、甲壳类动物和觅食鱼类组成的充满活力的生命交响曲。然而，这种充满节奏的生命乐章会被诡异的寂静所取代，只有炸弹爆炸的轰鸣声打破这份宁静。

Off the coast of Indonesia’s Spermonde Archipelago, underwater microphones captured over 3,500 explosions in just 3,600 hours of recording, according to researchers from the Zoological Society of London. 据伦敦动物学会的研究人员称，在印度尼西亚斯佩蒙德群岛（Spermonde Archipelago）海岸，水下麦克风仅在 3,600 小时的录音中就捕捉到了超过 3,500 次爆炸。

The source? Blast fishing — a globally banned technique that uses plastic bottles packed with explosives to stun and kill everything in a 90-foot radius. The highly destructive practice has been documented in at least 34 countries, from Lebanon and Libya to Brazil and Ecuador. 罪魁祸首是什么？是炸鱼——这是一种全球禁止的技术，使用装满炸药的塑料瓶来震晕并杀死半径 90 英尺内的所有生物。这种极具破坏性的行为已在至少 34 个国家被记录在案，从黎巴嫩、利比亚到巴西和厄瓜多尔。

While fishers predominantly use the method to catch fish for sale at local markets — identifiable by their ruptured internal organs and burst swim bladders — it’s also a grave threat to colorful coral reef habitats. 虽然渔民主要使用这种方法捕鱼并在当地市场出售（这些鱼可以通过破裂的内脏和爆裂的鱼鳔辨认出来），但这对色彩斑斓的珊瑚礁栖息地也是一种严重的威胁。

“Bomb fishing is quite likely the leading cause of reef loss in this area,” said Ben Williams, the paper’s lead author, noting that a single bomb can wreak 200 square feet of destruction. “These picturesque reefs get converted into a landscape that looks like the moon. It’s just rubble and dead coral with very little sign of life.” “炸鱼很可能是该地区珊瑚礁消失的主要原因，”该论文的主要作者本·威廉姆斯（Ben Williams）说。他指出，一枚炸弹就能造成 200 平方英尺的破坏。“这些风景如画的珊瑚礁被变成了像月球表面一样的景观。那里只有瓦砾和死珊瑚，几乎没有任何生命迹象。”

In 2023, researchers from Britain and Indonesia snorkeled down and anchored $150 audio recorders to short stakes in the seafloor. Using A.I. software — which the team has now made open-source — they scoured 16 months of audio in just a few hours to identify possible detonations. While the A.I. filtered suspected cases, each suggested sound wave was then manually verified to assess if it stemmed from a bomb or a misfiring boat engine. 2023 年，来自英国和印尼的研究人员潜入水下，将价值 150 美元的录音机固定在海底的短桩上。他们利用人工智能软件（该团队现已将其开源）在短短几个小时内筛查了 16 个月的音频，以识别可能的爆炸事件。虽然人工智能过滤出了疑似案例，但每一个建议的声波都会经过人工核实，以评估其是来自炸弹还是船只引擎的故障。

With sound traveling over four times faster through water than air, the team of marine scientists were able to detect detonations from over 10 miles away. 由于声音在水中的传播速度比在空气中快四倍多，海洋科学家团队能够探测到 10 英里以外的爆炸声。

“When [the bombs] are close, it’s so loud that it can shake you out of your skin,” said Williams. “But if you put your head up on the surface, you probably can’t even see the boat that did it.” “当（炸弹）靠近时，声音大到让你浑身战栗，”威廉姆斯说。“但如果你把头探出水面，你可能甚至看不到实施爆炸的船只。”

Accounting for stormy-season setbacks and spearfishermen who tampered with the recorders, the team calculated that there were likely more than 8,500 blasts each year — all within an area of just 350 square miles. 考虑到风暴季节的影响以及干扰录音机的渔民，研究小组计算出，每年可能发生超过 8,500 次爆炸，而这一切都发生在仅 350 平方英里的范围内。

With a bomb dropped once every 62 minutes, the equivalent of three football fields of reef are destroyed each year, according to Williams. Indeed, an estimated 75 percent of coral has been lost in the Spermonde Archipelago since 1990 as a result of human activities, bleaching, and warming waters. 据威廉姆斯称，平均每 62 分钟就有一枚炸弹被投下，每年相当于有三个足球场大小的珊瑚礁被摧毁。事实上，自 1990 年以来，由于人类活动、白化现象和海水变暖，斯佩蒙德群岛估计已有 75% 的珊瑚消失。

“Repeated blasts create shifting fields of rubble that prevent hard coral recruits from settling and growing, making natural regeneration and recovery of the reefs a difficult or impossible task,” said Melissa Hampton-Smith, a postdoctoral researcher at James Cook University in Australia, in an email to Inside Climate News. “反复的爆炸形成了不断移动的瓦砾场，阻止了硬珊瑚幼体定居和生长，使得珊瑚礁的自然再生和恢复变得困难甚至不可能，”澳大利亚詹姆斯库克大学的博士后研究员梅丽莎·汉普顿-史密斯（Melissa Hampton-Smith）在给《气候内幕》的一封电子邮件中写道。

The data revealed for the first time that bomb fishing takes place year-round, peaks during the mornings and significantly reduces on Fridays, the local day of prayer. 数据首次揭示，炸鱼活动全年都在发生，在早晨达到高峰，而在当地的礼拜日——周五，活动会显著减少。

While understudied, the incentives for the use of dangerous dynamite fishing are often falsely attributed solely to poverty and desperation. The cost barrier to buying boats, bombs, and detonators means it’s more likely a practice for middle-income fishers, according to experts. 虽然相关研究尚不充分，但使用危险炸药捕鱼的动机往往被错误地完全归咎于贫困和绝望。专家表示，购买船只、炸弹和雷管的成本门槛意味着，这更有可能是中等收入渔民的行为。

“A combination of factors drives blast fishing, including ineffective enforcement and management,” said Hampton-Smith, highlighting how indiscriminate the explosions are, killing all manner of species, regardless of age, size, or intent. “多种因素共同推动了炸鱼活动，包括执法和管理不力，”汉普顿-史密斯说。她强调了爆炸的无差别性，无论物种的年龄、大小或种类，都会被杀害。

“Managing all illegal fishing, including blast fishing, is complex and varies from place to place, but in general equitable, consistent, and legitimate enforcement is key,” said Hampton-Smith, who first studied the phenomenon while living and working in East Africa’s bomb fishing hot spot, Tanzania. “管理包括炸鱼在内的所有非法捕捞活动非常复杂，且因地而异，但总体而言，公平、一致和合法的执法是关键，”汉普顿-史密斯说。她最初是在东非炸鱼热点地区坦桑尼亚生活和工作时研究这一现象的。

Despite the widespread harm, intercepting blast fishers in the act remains an elusive goal in a nation encompassing over 70 million acres of marine protected areas — a region larger than the entire United Kingdom. 尽管危害广泛，但在一个拥有超过 7000 万英亩海洋保护区的国家（该区域比整个英国还要大），当场拦截炸鱼者仍然是一个难以实现的目标。

Though authorities in neighboring Malaysia successfully confiscated 1,250 pounds of ammonia fertilizer suspected of being used to construct homemade fish bombs this May, patrols currently fail to effectively pinpoint the detonations in real time. 尽管邻国马来西亚的当局在今年 5 月成功没收了 1,250 磅涉嫌用于制造自制鱼雷的氨肥，但目前的巡逻仍无法有效实时定位爆炸点。

“Restoration efforts struggle to keep up with such rapid rates of destruction caused by bombing,” said Jamaluddin Jompa, coauthor of the paper and a research professor at Hasanuddin University in Indonesia, in a press release. “Immediate work to tackle bomb fishing is needed.” “修复工作难以跟上炸鱼造成的如此迅速的破坏速度，”该论文的合著者、印度尼西亚哈桑努丁大学的研究教授贾马鲁丁·琼帕（Jamaluddin Jompa）在新闻稿中表示。“必须立即采取行动解决炸鱼问题。”

Williams is hopeful the new research could be used to construct a network of audio sensors with GPS syncs to provide real-time detection and localization for marine authorities. 威廉姆斯希望这项新研究能用于构建一个带有 GPS 同步功能的音频传感器网络，为海洋管理部门提供实时探测和定位。

And not just in Indonesia. From the Philippines to Turkey to Zanzibar, Williams hopes the now publicly available code will be rolled out across the globe to keep biodiverse habitats from being reduced to “rubble.” 不仅是在印度尼西亚。从菲律宾到土耳其再到桑给巴尔，威廉姆斯希望现在公开的代码能在全球范围内推广，以防止生物多样性丰富的栖息地沦为“瓦砾”。

Crucially, unlike bleaching events or warming waters, bomb fishing represents a rare form of coral crisis where a local fix exists. 至关重要的是，与白化事件或海水变暖不同，炸鱼代表了一种罕见的、可以通过局部手段解决的珊瑚危机。

“Because bomb fishing is an acute stressor, you can restore your way out of it,” said Williams. “If bomb fishing stopped, and you went and restored the reefs, they should be healthy and thrive for quite some time to come.” “因为炸鱼是一种急性压力源，你可以通过修复来摆脱它，”威廉姆斯说。“如果炸鱼停止了，你去修复珊瑚礁，它们应该能在未来很长一段时间内保持健康并茁壮成长。”