Before picking up nets 20 years ago, Partiana and other fishers in Les caught aquarium fish with the same chemical that movie spies put in suicide capsules: cyanide. Fishers mix it with a solution in a spray bottle and use it to blanket the reef in poison. The neurotoxin stuns fish, rendering them a lethargic, easy catch for several minutes. It’s just long enough to collect shy and highly sought-after fish like the blue tang, the inspiration behind Finding Nemo’s Dory.

The easy harvesting that cyanide provides comes at a deadly price. As much as 90 percent of fish caught with cyanide die before they reach a retailer. And the poison can severely damage coral reefs by destroying coral polyps and other organisms essential to reef health. When fishers are properly trained to use nets correctly so that they do not break or dislodge coral, net catching is demonstrably less harmful to the reef and its inhabitants, says Shannon Switzer Swanson, a marine social ecologist and PhD candidate at Stanford University in California, who works with fishing communities in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.