as you probably realize I have somewhat
of a passion for fish one of the very
first Chinese characters that I learnt
when I came to Hong Kong 25 years ago
was the Chinese character for fish and
this character not only means fish but
as I came to learn it has other meanings
associated with it abundance affluence
plenty and I have become very aware of
how the ways that we use language and
express ourselves are obviously going to
reflect ways in which society actually
sees the world so think about a website
POF it means plenty of fish and it’s a
dating website as you might guess and
the idea is that if you use the website
you might find a partner plenty of fish
in the sea
well this perspective of our society has
been for millennia that there are plenty
of fish in sea well why not the seas are
enormous
they must be plenty of fish and in fact
until relatively recently that was true
but things are changing and
unfortunately the reality today is very
different and we’re losing many of our
fisheries that means some of the seafood
we eat is getting harder to get and more
expensive and we’re even finding that
some of the commercial species species
that we used to be finding in the market
abundantly are now threatened and we’re
seeing this also in Hong Kong if you go
to the markets in Hong Kong if you
regularly buy fish you might find that
the fish that you once we’re able to get
very frequently are getting smaller they
might be not so readily available and
they are more expensive and the fact
that they’re more expensive is a real
reflection of how difficult it is
increasingly to get fish from around the
world we import in Hong Kong almost all
of the fish that we get if you were to
ask your parents or your grandpa
I would bet that they would tell you
about fish that they used to see in the
market here in Hong Kong but we don’t
see anymore and one example is this
giant yellow croaker and I would bet
that probably most of you don’t even
know what this fish is but this used to
be a common fish and it was part of a
fishery less than 30 kilometers from
where we’re all sitting here today you
are sitting I understand it but where we
are all today this was a very valuable
fishery and it was very valuable because
inside the body of the animal is the
swim bladder it gives the animal
buoyancy called fog ow in Cantonese it’s
extremely valuable and because it’s so
valuable the fisherman would go out and
they get as many of the fish as they
could
there was no management of this
particular fishery and this once common
fish has never almost reached extinction
it’s one of the most threatened species
in the world and we’re seeing the same
kind of pattern with things like the
yellow bluefin tuna sharks and other
species this is a very worrying pattern
now I started working on fish biology
and I was particularly interested in
reproduction fish do some pretty amazing
things to make other fish and
increasingly though I started working on
fish that were commercially important
that was sort of a chance thing and I
started to get very interested in the
interactions between fishing and how
fishing is done and the biology of the
animal how they reproduced because some
fish are much more vulnerable much more
easy to over fish than others and so I
focused on this part of the biology of
the animals and increasingly as I saw
fisheries collapsing around the world
and as I realized that some species were
becoming threatened I focused much more
on the more vulnerable species of fish
and the reason was I figured that if I
could solve the challenges we faced with
keeping these more vulnerable species
the lessons we learn could be applied to
the less vulnerable species if we can’t
solve those problems those very
threatened species today will disappear
yeah like elephants like rhinos unless
we do something then the next most
vulnerable and then the next most
vulnerable so on down the food chain
until all that’s left are jellyfish okay
I know that jellyfish are not fish but
hopefully you get my drift
and I have a vision of a world where
we’d still have fish we have all the
species that are supposed to be there
we have fish whether we want to chase
them photograph them study them or
simply eat them this is my vision for
the future all right so I came to Hong
Kong in 1993 and I wanted to select
species of fish to work on that are
locally relevant and important to
society and so I spent quite a lot of
time going around the market places wet
markets and the live fish markets
looking at the different species and I
knew most of them the groupers and the
snappers which are common reef fishes my
focus is on reef fishes and then every
now and again I would come across a
little fish that got my attention and he
got my attention for a couple of reasons
one is I didn’t know what it was and I’m
a scientist so I’m curious but the
second reason was that this fish
actually seemed to look at you and there
are not many fish that look at you
not look at you in the eye so I was very
intrigued and I went back and I found
that this was a juvenile a baby of a
species which is actually it turns out
it’s the Napoleon or humphead wrasse the
same name which is one of the biggest
reef fishes in the world I just didn’t
know what the babies looked like now if
you’re a diver which I am and you come
across one of these animals in the field
you enter his territory he has his area
on the reef that he but he lives in
he’ll come and check you out now this is
an animal that’s as big as a bear it’s
as big as a big lion but it is so gentle
and his eyes swivel on two sides of the
head in different ways like a chameleon
and he’ll check you out he’ll see what
are you doing in my territory and when
he sees that you’re not very interesting
or he gets bored maybe he
hungry he’s off to get there a yummy
crab or or a shell of some kind or maybe
he’s going to go off to his mating area
where he reproduces and I’ll talk about
that in a minute to find his soul mate
so may is the Cantonese name for this
species rather convenient write it so
anyway maybe he’s off to find his his
soul mate so I realized that although
the big fish was well known amongst
divers actually there was hardly
anything known about the biology and so
for a number of years my colleagues and
I started working on this species to
learn just about how it lives and among
other things we learned that it can live
for more than 30 years that’s longer
than a horse it’s longer than a tiger
it’s actually longer than almost any of
you in this room have been on the planet
so this is quite a long-lived animal but
what intrigued me most of all was the
way in which it reproduces because it
has a pretty interesting take on sex and
that take is that it actually changes
its sex so it starts off as a juvenile
the little one that I saw in the tank
all those years ago then when it gets
bigger it’ll become a female they’ll all
become females and a few of them when
they get much bigger and older they will
become males and there aren’t that many
males because not so many animals
survive the decade or so that’s needed
to become a big male and those big males
the few that as a diver if you’re lucky
to see and there’s still some around are
pretty interesting the way they
reproduce so imagine the animal in the
video and he started moving along the
reef and he is he is going to his mating
site to find his partner and he’ll swim
along he’s a fish with a purpose he’s
got his fins all tucked in and when he
gets to his mating site it’s an area
that they go to only to reproduce they
go to it’s like having a date in a way
you go to that particular place at a
particular time and you meet other
females in the case of the male
and when he gets to the site he does
something pretty remarkable he brightens
up he really does he it’s like a light
it’s like a neon light when you actually
watch it so he’s actually using body
language I can’t really describe it in
any other way but he uses his body to
send the message to the females that
he’s ready and he not only changes his
color and brightens up but that thin on
the bottom of the picture he points it
and he crosses his tail there’s a very
distinctive signs and they only occur at
this time when he’s ready to mate and
the females will come to this mating
site and they will one by one join him
up in the water and their release their
eggs you might be able to see the little
white cloud a little bit clearer here
and then he will release the sperm and
they work the eggs and the eggs will be
fertilized and then they will drift off
into the water we don’t know how far we
don’t know that we don’t actually
understand much about that part of the
life history and this will continue the
cycle of life will continue the
regeneration of populations of Napoleon
will continue as long as there are
enough males and females and they come
to the mating site and they’re able to
do it but the trouble is that this cycle
of life is being broken and we need to
understand why this is and how this is
to do that you under have to understand
about the biology of the animal which we
had been learning and you have to
understand about how we humans are
interacting through our fisheries with
the animal and you also hope to find
some solutions in so doing so this
particular species in the fish area in
the trade for the live fish markets the
most popular size are these little ones
the size I first saw which was why they
were in the tanks in Hong Kong and the
reason they are so popular is because
this is a very good plate size it’s a
good size to put on a plate for a family
or for a small gathering and because
it’s a popular size it’s very valuable
this is one of the most valuable
all the reef fish hi ban you and so this
is very heavily sought-after by traders
and by fishermen
now if lots of those little ones are
taken it means that there aren’t so many
females there aren’t so many females
there’ll be a lot fewer of those big
males and so this will is what was
happening to many juveniles too many
babies were being removed from the
fishery and the fishery was declining
so we understood something about the
interaction of the fishery and the
species what we needed to understand
about the fishery itself to be able to
work out how to work with the fishermen
and the traders to try to move towards a
more sustainable use of the species and
reduce the threats to it now we have to
understand about the fishery Indonesia
for this particular species is the major
country where most of the napoléon’s
come from and the destination is Hong
Kong actually the destination is China
but Hong Kong is the trade hub so
understanding the trade and activity
between Indonesia and Hong Kong is very
key to getting a sustainable trade how
does this fishery work well you have
hundreds of fishermen spending thousands
of hours in little boats going out and
catching groupers the red fish here
which probably are familiar to most of
you this is what you see in the tanks
outside the restaurants and every now
and again they will go and get a little
Napoleon fish is very valuable so this
is very highly sought after and these
fishermen will bring these fish that
they’re catching one by one to a cage
like the one you see in the picture
consolidate the numbers of fish until
you have 10 or 20 tonnes these are then
exported either by vessel by sea or by
air to Hong Kong this is how this
fishery operates now this fishery was
not controlled and these are very
valuable fish and so fishermen are going
to get as many as they possibly can if
there are no controls and in Indonesia
at the populations were declining
particularly of the Napoleon
the situation got so bad that in 2004
the Napoleon fish was listed on site E’s
appendix to now sigh T’s is a convention
you may have heard of in relation to
maybe elephants or rhinos because it
helps to protect threatened species with
Napoleon the application of the
Convention was such that it was for
sustainable trade we can still trade the
species but it must be done sustainably
and what that meant was that both
Indonesia had to act and the importing
unit the city in our case hong kong and
china as a country had to act as well it
takes to site ease is a convention where
both parties must must be must be active
so indonesia and we work with the
indonesian government put in a quota for
export of a thousand fish thousand fish
could be exported sustainably from
indonesia okay fine well and good that
was a real first for the country and so
we started shifting our work from
indonesia to hong kong to actually have
a look at the trade what was happening
in the trade here well we did a very
simple exercise where by being at a
university with many students you can do
all kinds of really interesting projects
there’s a lot of manpower womanpower and
so the students in this particular case
went out to count the Napoleon’s in the
tanks outside the restaurant just see
how many were on sale and what we found
were there were many many more on sale
than should be in Hong Kong legally
because society’s requires paperwork to
accompany all of the fish so we knew
that there was a lot of illegal trade
and in fact this attracted quite a bit
of press attention this is from the
South China Morning Post we notified the
government they increase their
enforcement and in fact illegal trade
did decline but it was still happening
how do we deal with this if you are a
hungry diner or you are a government
enforcement officer and you see a fish
in a tank how do you know whether it’s
legal or not
and this is really the question we have
to solve it’s not tagged doesn’t have a
physical mark on it it doesn’t have its
visa with it it doesn’t have paperwork
of course how do you know so we thought
about this for a while because this was
a very important part of solving this
issue of having sustainable trade well
the answer was actually we realized
staring us in the face now please take a
few minutes to look at these two
pictures and I’m gonna ask you if these
are the same fish or not know anyone say
yes no they’re very obviously different
right you can see the markings some of
the most obvious ones there’s a split in
the dark marking and if you had enough
time you would see quite a lot of
differences in the spot markings at the
top and the markings around the chin
they are very different and this species
has really some very beautiful and
intricate markings around the side of
the of the face and they’re sort of like
finger prints and what can we do with
finger prints we can use technology to
identify finger prints and distinguish
between individuals and so what we
actually did we trialed this you use it
visually by comparing different fish
visually and actually there are a couple
of prosecutions based on on that on that
attempt but we have contracted now an IT
company a young local company to develop
an app that can be used by the law
enforcement officers
now when the napoleons come in to hong
kong the officer will take a picture of
the fish and they do anyway they always
have none independently of this
particular project so they have a
picture of every single fish that comes
in and the idea with the app is that if
you see a fish which is in a tank you
will take a picture of it and load that
picture up onto a database and then you
can use that picture to compare with the
photographs in the database of legally
imported fish and you can see if there
is a similarity and in this case this is
a high similarity so this in this case
would be a legally imported fish all
right so this is an app that we roll
this year and hopefully will really help
to bring about legal trade in this
species alright there’s one more piece
to the challenge to solving the
challenge of how to ensure sustainable
and trade and that is with the consumers
because of course it’s the consumers
that are creating the demand for the
fish because people are paying so much
money this is why this fish is so
valuable and so it’s and why it’s so
heavily sought-after by traders so
consumers are of course you could say
causing the problem but they could also
be part of the solution so whether it’s
for Napoleon fish generally or whether
it’s for seafood in general please do as
consumers think probably most of us here
including myself consume seafood please
try to make sure you have certified
seafood or sustainably sourced seafood
and there are all kinds of guidelines
available to do this if you have a look
at the guides you’ll see that the
napoleon fish at the moment is
recommended for avoiding simply because
we still have a legal trade that hasn’t
been solved if you do insist on eating a
napoleon fish or selling a napoleon fish
if you’re a retailer make sure it’s
legal there has to be paperwork with it
and there has to be a possession license
which looks like this with the name of
the species on it and by law that has to
be visible in that reat way where the
fish is being retailed so just make sure
it’s legal if you’re interested to learn
more about the species we have a
facebook campaign and you know if you
for teaching purposes but but the public
it would be a wonderful thing to be
writing about the species making films
about the species telling your friends
because it is quite a remarkable species
and the Facebook campaign also
encourages you to report illegally sold
fish it’s very important that we pay
attention to what we eat and where these
things come from and that if they are
protected to try to support sustainable
use and ensure that animals are legally
being traded because legal trade
supports sustainable trade and this is
how we maintain a species like Napoleon
fish how we can have hope for the
humphead how we can have hope for the
bluefin tuna for sharks is very
important that we actually make these
kinds of decisions and responsible
decisions because in the end our society
will be defined not only by what we
create but also by what we refuse to
destroy thank you
[Applause] [Music]