Our friends from the eastern side of the world have long been known to be rather enterprising with the way that they decimate the ocean to sustain their fish needs. A photographer has been able to reveal their latest shocking technique: cyanide poisoning free-divers.

In an area known as the Coral Triangle, which is basically a triangular shaped area encompassing the majority of central Indonesia and stretching south to northern Australia, children as young as 10 are free diving up to 40 meters deep to poison reef fish with potassium cyanide.

Our boys and the ocean’s reefs are both suffering as a result.

Our boys, because they breathe air from a hose pipe at 40 meters deep and surface too quickly, and often ending up with decompression sickness (the bends) and other compressor-related injuries.

And our oceans because, well, potassium cyanide, once in the water, dissolves and spreads for miles in the currents and devastates the reefs and other sea life it comes into contact with.

[Source: Earth Advocates]

[Images: James Morgan]