Proceedings of the 11 th International Coral Reef Symposium, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, 7-11 July 2008 Session number 22 Banggai cardinalfish: towards a sustainable ornamental fishery S. Ndobe 1 , A. Moore 2 1) Sekolah Tinggi Perikanan dan Kelautan, Jalan Soekarno-Hatta, Kotak Pos 1016, Palu 94118, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, email: samndobe@yahoo.com 2) Yayasan Palu Hijau, Jalan Setia Budi Lorong Siswa No12, Palu 94111, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, email: abigail2105@yahoo.com Abstract. Central Sulawesi Province has over 4,500km of coastline and over 700 islands including the Banggai Archipelago. Established as Banggai Kepulauan District in 1999 and covering almost all the native distribution of the Banggai cardinalfish, Pterapogon kauderni, though introduced populations have become established elsewhere. A paternal mouth brooder with direct development traded in large numbers as an ornamental fish, P. kauderni was recently proposed for listing in CITES Appendix II and has since been listed as Endangered on the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) Red List. Local activities to develop sustainable management of P. kauderni, underway since 2005, aim to address concerns regarding the Banggai cardinalfish fishery and trade as well as habitat conservation. The CITES proposal in 2007 brought the Banggai cardinalfish into the limelight at national and international levels, and a multi-stakeholder multi-year national Banggai Cardinalfish Action Plan has been developed. Developments since 2004 are outlined including initiatives under the Sea Partnership Program; local research and some recent results; and early progress in implementing the Action Plan, including the establishment of the BCF Centre, District and village marine protected areas and a Banggai cardinalfish trade monitoring system. Key words: Banggai cardinalfish, Sulawesi, ornamental fishery. Introduction The Banggai cardinalfish Pterapogon kauderni (Koumans, 1933) is an endemic, reef-associated fish with a distribution limited to the Banggai Archipelago in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia and a few nearby islands (Fig. 1). Some introduced populations have become established along the trade routes, including sites in North Sulawesi (Erdmann & Vagelli, 2001), Palu Bay (Moore & Ndobe, 2007a) and North Bali (Lilley, pers.com). Figure 1: The endemic distribution of P. kauderni according to the CITES proposal (Vagelli, 2005 in Anonymous, 2007a). The male incubates the eggs (around 20 days) and larvae (around 9 days) in his mouth, and fasts for this period On release juveniles immediately seek shelter and food in available nearby habitat, with no pelagic dispersal phase, cannibalism by the (male) parent and other adult fish is common (Vagelli, 1999). Locally known as bebese tayung, which in Bajo (sea gypsy) language means little fish in the sea urchins, since the early 1990’s the Banggai cardinalfish has been internationally traded as an ornamental fish (Ndobe & Moore, 2007). Discovered by Kaudern and classified by Koumans in 1933, P. kauderni was “forgotten” by the scientific community until it was “rediscovered” in 1994 (Allen & McKenna 2001). In the following 10 years there was much international interest and a considerable amount of research into the biology, ecology and exploitation of the species by visiting scientists who generally considered the trade to be unsustainable (Allen and McKenna 2001; Lunn and Moreau 2004; Kolm and Berglund 2003; Vagelli and Erdmann 2002). Key data and information were available at international level since 2001 or even earlier but in general were not communicated to local or national 1026