MANILA, Philippines -- Live fish traders have accepted a quota plan designed to cut the coral trout catch and prevent a collapse of the reef fish industry, the World Wildlife Fund said Thursday.

The agreement, signed on the western island of Palawan last week, would cut the live reef fish catch by 27 per cent, or around 200 tons a year.

It aims to arrest the serious decline in the resource, which the international conservation group estimates could disappear by 2020 if current fishing practices and international demand continue.

The Philippines is the biggest supplier of coral trout, the most highly valued live reef fish, to seafood hubs such as Hong Kong and China.

Palawan supplies around 60 per cent of all Philippine fish, it added.

"The trade in live reef fish in Palawan supports entire communities, many of which have few alternatives for livelihoods," said Geoffrey Muldoon of the fund's Coral Triangle Programme.

"Under a business-as-usual scenario, Palawan's live reef fish trade would become economically unviable in about a decade," he said.

"We hope that we can build on the new quota system and establish a comprehensive management plan that will protect communities from this significant food security threat."

The Palawan live reef fish trade has supplied business lunches and expensive banquets in Asia since the 1980s, bringing more than $100 million a year to fishermen who often use cyanide or explosives to stun the fish.

The WWF said a survey last year found that 20 of 161 species of grouper, a reef fish that makes up a large part of the Coral Triangle's live fish trade, were threatened with extinction.

The 20 include the squaretail coral grouper and humpback grouper, which are a popular luxury live food in Asian seafood restaurants.

The Philippines is considered to be the center of the Coral Triangle, a region between the Pacific and Indian Oceans that harbors 75 percent of all known species of plants and animals that thrive among coral reefs.