Issues

Sustainable living for human and marine inhabitants

The proposed Tun Mustapha Park will be the largest marine park in Malaysia when gazetted.  With so many people living in and around the park, they must be allowed to maintain their livelihoods in a sustainable manner.

The rich marine resources of the proposed Tun Mustapha Park are threatened by overfishing, destructive fishing, blast fishing and the live reef fish trade.  Continued fishing with bombs or poison and overfishing of almost all fish types have resulted in habitat destruction – degrading large portions of reef and fish populations.  The live reef fish trade meanwhile has removed most of the critical top predators from the reefs, thus changing the basic ecology of the ecosystem.  These fishing methods are illegal and destroy the coral reef habitats.