Chinese boats catch fish, get corals off Philippine island

[lastlid]

Daylight Robbery

"Puerto Princesa (Philippine Daily Inquirer/ANN) - Under the protective watch of warships, Chinese fishing vessels anchored off the Philippine-occupied Pag-asa Island in the disputed Spratly archipelago in the West Philippine Sea operated at will yesterday, catching fish but mainly collecting corals in large quantities.
The fishing boats were only 9 kilometres from Pag-asa, that municipal employees on the island could clearly see them using winches and booms to haul corals from the seabed to wooden "sampans" (junks), said Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon of Kalayaan, which governs Pag-asa and four other islets in the Spratlys claimed by the Philippines.
"Our people, the civilian staff of the municipality of Kalayaan, wanted to stop them yesterday," Bito-onon said. "I had to ask them to stand down and just monitor the developments for now."
The mayor said his staff observed the Chinese fishermen rigging steel cables to large coral heads to pull them up using winches. The rocks were then hauled into larger ships using booms."


http://ph.news.yahoo.com/chinese-boa...061002254.html

[grahamw48]

They don't care.

Consider the numbers of Tigers and other rare species being decimated because of China's appetite for their body parts.

It appears all the Chinese care about is Giant Pandas. presumably they are of no quack medicinal value.

[lastlid]

It appears all the Chinese care about is Giant Pandas. presumably they are of no quack medicinal value.

Perhaps we should nip in and steal a load of their pandas?

[lastlid]

I wonder what they do with the corals. I presume they don't eat them?

[CBM]

Not even the Cantonese, who eat everything except cockroaches and people, eat coral. It will be sold as decorations, probably to ultra-nationalists with a plaque identifying it as Chinese.

Disgusting.

[lastlid]

Thats a bit daft. That simply kills a lot of fishing potential.....
They possibly take the coral for potential medicinal purposes?