PNG was described as the "last frontier" in the mid 90's for the live fish trade, where the Hong Kong operators had largely exhausted the South East Asian resources up to our door step, and PNG was still considered pristine. The two waves of the trade in PNG, interspaced by a several year moratorium on the fishery, have shown that despite all commitments, restricting harvesting to resource owners and the best intents, the foreign interests involved have promoted, foreign collectors, extensive use of cyanide, reef destruction and other banned practices throughout the fishery.

Like the Live food fish trade, Beche-de-mer despite restrictions has proven unmanageable and is proving to be unsustainable and heavily foreign dominated, all this despite being the most regulated fishery on paper. The reality is the management regimes in place are not working, and the beche-de-mer resource continues in a boom and bust cycle, which has existed since pre-colonial times. The future of PNG’s reefs remains in the balance.

The marine aquarium trade globally is typified by unsustainable practices, habitat degradation and destructive fishing methods, often evolving as a community level extension of the larger live fish trade. Our Asian neighbor’s reefs are widely decimated and once again PNG is the "last frontier", and the remaining corner of the most diverse reef ecosystem in the world; - the "coral triangle."

If not properly set up and managed, the marine aquarium trade will be highly destructive to the resource base. It can and will go the way of the beche-de-mer and live reef food fish trades with massive resource depletion, destructive fishing practices, deceptive marketing, inequitable development, low ball pricing, community and fisher dissention, local and national level corruption, and local and national industry collapse.