Coral Triangle

Production Co: All Environment Production, BBC Television, TVE
Producer/Director: Lenora Carey

Year: 1988

Genre: Documentary

Region: Philippines

Duration: 47’

Language: English

Dynamited, poisoned, quarried and sold, the coral reefs surrounding the 7,000 islands that make up the Philippines are being systematically destroyed.  In Coral Triangle, director Lenora Carey assesses the pressures put on the country’s most valuable resource by a population of 58 million.  Masked fishermen use cyanide to stun brightly coloured fish for the aquarium trade.  Daring divers catch venomous sea snakes for their skins: already three species are locally extinct.  And in a spectacular underwater sequence, a group of young Filipino boys drive brightly-coloured shoals of fish into huge underwater nets, in the dangerous technique known as maru ami or chamber-net fishing.  But the treasures of the reef could be exploited and sustained, the film argues, if importers and tourists observe international regulations on endangered species.