China urged to save coral reefs in Asian waters amid booming illegal trade in giant clams

China's thriving black market for jewellery made from giant clams continues to drive the destruction of biodiverse coral reefs in Indonesian and Philippine waters as Chinese marine scientists are urged to participate in joint efforts to survey the damage in contested seas.

Over 20,000 acres of coral reefs have been destroyed mainly due to illegal demand for giant clams, according to a study by the US think-tank CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, which says they are bound for China where the shells are coveted as carved ornaments.

"These carvings of statues and jewellery are sold in the black market," said Harrison Pretat, Deputy Director of CSIS, adding that the trade is centred in the southernmost Chinese island province of Hainan, on the north end of the South China Sea.

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"It's supposed to be illegal. Nevertheless, there's been documented evidence of it happening."

Coral reefs are crucial for biodiversity in the South China Sea, supporting a quarter of all marine species and in turn, providing livelihoods for millions of people through fishing.

In February, the Chinese embassy in the Philippines rebutted allegations of reef destruction, stressing that Beijing attaches great importance to environmental protection of the area they call Nansha Islands and its surrounding reefs and waters.

In the heart of Southeast Asia, the South China Sea is a crucial passage for international trade with 20 per cent of the world's shipping crossing through it. The area accounts for 14 per cent of the world's commercial fishing, providing a livelihood for at least 3.7 million people in the region.

The oil-rich sea is, however, contested with overlapping claims from surrounding countries including China, which is claiming a large swathe of the waters under its U-shaped nine-dash line that reaches as far south as 24 nautical miles from Malaysia's state of Sarawak on the Borneo island.

Speaking in Kuala Lumpur, Pretat said that while China's sand dredging and island building around the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands are widely reported, it is secondary to the damage done by the harvesting of giant clams from coral reefs.

Using satellite imagery, Pretat said that China's dredging and landfilling efforts were found to have damaged over 4,500 acres of coral reef - a figure which leaps to over 20,000 acres when added to the damage caused by giant clam harvesting.

"It is important to underscore that - even though it's less covered and less known - giant clam harvesting has damaged a much larger area of coral reefs," Pretat said.

Adding that there is only so much marine scientists can learn from satellite-based research, he called for governments in the region - including China - to mount joint on-site investigations into the deteriorating state of the reefs.

"There's a lot of interest from the Philippines and Vietnam, I'm sure in Malaysia [too] from academics and researchers ... but it's going to take some amount of political and diplomatic will to organise it in joint activities," he said.

"Certainly China should also be included ... and China has many excellent marine scientists," he said. "All the coastal states need to be involved if you want to learn what's going on."

Giant clams, which can weigh up to 200kg and live for more than a century, have been facing an existential threat from illegal poaching - and very likely organised crime - which has spiked in the last few years.

Demand for the molluscs - often over a metre wide - has surged in tandem with stricter global controls on ivory, with the visual similarity of the massive clams making them highly sought after by China's jewellery carving industry.

Normally found around coral reefs, giant clams are typically extracted by digging up the reefs, causing massive damage to their surroundings, which take many years to mature.

Other techniques that have been used in Philippine waters are even more damaging as they use water pumps to induce pressure on the reefs, resulting in their destruction and revealing giant clams underneath them.

The harvesting of giant clams in the South China Sea was first detected in 2012 and has ramped up after Beijing banned the harvesting of the molluscs in its waters in 2015, pushing poachers to venture further out.

The lack of clear maritime jurisdiction due to the contested status of the waters by surrounding nations, including China's 'nine-dash line', has made it difficult to conduct enforcement.

Last April, a rare report on the invertebrate, titled Trading Giants published by wild species trade watchdog TRAFFIC showed that some species are becoming "functionally extinct" in several countries, including Indonesia and the Philippines, meaning their disappearing population is no longer plays a role in the ecosystem.

The CSIS report found signs of depleting fish stocks in the South China Sea, with annual fishing catch rising steadily from the 1950s before reaching a plateau in 1998.

"There is certainly some portion of the catch that is being affected by the destruction of these coral reefs. How much is that versus the overfishing is very hard to separate," Pretat said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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