Conservation: Bombing in the Mentawais

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ike shooting fish in a barrel. If that barrel was made of one of the world’s most precious reefs. And if by shooting you mean throwing homemade bombs that leave craters 3 yards in diameter and kill all living things near it. So yes, what’s going on in the Mentawais right now is just like shooting fish in a barrel. As idiotic as that is.

“For over a month now, the Playgrounds area has had at least three boats bombing our reefs every day,” says the owner of one of the surf resorts in the area. “When the weather is good, they can do more than five cycles of bombing and collecting the dead fish in a day. Each cycle is between five to eight bombs. Calculating a low average, we estimate more than 2,250 bombs have been exploded in our 15-mile radius area.”

Link to YouTube video of bombings.

The owner of another nearby resort is equally disturbed: “Countless animals and acres of coral have been killed. It was a sad day for me personally when the dugong that has been living around the resort for years washed up on the beach dead after a boat’s bomb attack.”

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