Hope reef

14 nautical miles out from one of Indonesia’s busiest ports, I’m standing waist-deep and wide-eyed in the waters of Bontosua Island. A far cry from the usual pace of island life, I watch a meticulous kind of chaos unfold, as community members, marine scientists and stakeholders from across Indonesia work in unison, dancing between baskets of floating coral, steel structures cartwheeling overhead and dodging trip hazards that lurk beneath water stirred up by a hundred feet. The thrum of community is strong, spirits are high, the sun is barely into the sky – and the world’s largest coral reef restoration event is just getting started.

Blast fishing, also known as bomb or dynamite fishing, has been a widespread fishing method in Indonesia since the 1940s. The practice, which involves throwing explosives into the water to kill or stun fish, is one of the most destructive forms of fishing. Whilst bombs have evolved from dynamite left over from the Second World War to today’s cheaper, homemade kind – fashioned from fertiliser, kerosene and more recently, papayas for noise reduction – the technique’s popularity lies in the indisputable economic advantages of a low cost and a quick reward.

Having spent much of my adult life on the reefs of the Indo-Pacific as a coral reef biologist, I’m no stranger to this practice. The first time I experienced a blast underwater several years ago, I felt it rather than heard it. Down at 20m with my head in the coral setting up an experiment for my Master’s thesis, a shockwave ripped through the water, the resounding ‘boom’ ricocheting through my chest. Though several kilometres away, it felt like a gunshot. Up close, the impact would have blasted coral to pieces, ruptured the internal organs of fish and shattered every physical structure within a 50m radius to rubble in seconds. If climate change is death by a slow cancer, then dynamite fishing is an amputation.

If you’ve ever dived a bombed reef, you’ll know that the scars of a bomb site are as striking as seeing deforestation from the window of a plane. The destruction is indiscriminate and the devastation is total. Though the practice has long been illegal and carries a hefty sentence (up to five years in prison and the equivalent of a US$130,000 fine), Indonesia has struggled to stop the practice. In a country with scores of small- scale fishermen, complex social issues, 99,000 kilometres of coastline and a historical lack of effective or cohesive marine management, blast fishing has remained an epidemic for more than half a century.