The Live Reef Food Fish Trade (LRFT) is simple – reef fish are caught and kept alive until the moment they are cooked in a restaurant or hotel. In reality, the trade is besieged by many issues at every level of the process. At the source, the issues are
overfishing, catching of juveniles, using noxious substances (mostly sodium cyanide) to catch fish easily and targeted fishing for high-value species, often to the point of disrupting the food chain in source areas.

Although some species of groupers are already being bred in aquaculture laboratories and farms, the leopard coral trout (Plectropomus leopardus), a preferred and expensive species for the foreign market, has not yet been bred for production on a commercial scale. In some cases, targeted species like the humphead wrasse have been harvested to the point that they are now classified as endangered species under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. The LRFT initiative of WWF-Philippines had very humble beginnings. It began in 2006 with a USD2790 grant to search for spawning aggregation sites in Palawan. Over the next years, WWF continued to conduct more research projects on the LRFT, as this program eventually became a priority of the Coral Triangle Initiative.

A new project on LRFT now seeks to diversify the fishers and cagers into venturing into other species by venturing into more sustainable aquaculture. WWF also continues to work with the municipal and provincial government regarding fishery management policies.