Conservation? Any input?

[iReef1234]

Hi, I was wondering what everyone here in the new hobby forum thinks of conservation. I just heard that clownfish may be listed on the endangered species list and I was wondering if that was really conservation or not.

Does anyone have a good definition of conservation (like, not from a dictionary)?

 

[whosurcaddie]

I actually think its a good idea to add clownfish to the endangered species list. The majority of clownfish in the hobby now are tank bred. So its not really harming the hobby and its good for the reef's.

But conservation can be different for some people. Some people believe we should have no interaction with nature at all. Some believe there's enough life in the ocean so overfishing isn't a concern. I Lean more toward not too concerned but I don't want the reefs and oceans destroyed either.

 

[Sk8r]

Trends in the hobby away from reliance on natural reefs: 1. breeding fish---we're getting better at it.
2. using mostly dry limestone (and running GFO! because the stuff has a lot of phosphate!) and very little live rock from the reefs per tank.
3. fragging corals (breaking them up and selling them on) instead of wild collection.
4. bringing up frags and not buying whole colonies.
5. never releasing fish, inverts, or weed back into the wild (you can't give them airfare to their proper habitat, and lionfish in the Caribbean are now wiping out native species, and caulerpa weed is doing huge damage in the Mediterranean.)
6. learning the hobby and getting needed equipment BEFORE getting fish, so you don't kill off your fish and inverts through lack of preparation. Some of these fish should live longer than a decade.

 

[Eric Boerner]

Conservation of threatened and endangered species is the act of placing mitigating controls on a genetically unique species in order to reduce the further destruction of it's habitat, food sources, or breeding capabilities.

Three criteria need to be met in order to list a species as threatened. Is it's habitat threatened by man-made influence? Climate change meets this first primer in almost all marine species. Is the population in decline? This can be by human means, diseases, parasites, loss of breeding locations, etc. Can the species recover within 100 years in it's natural habitat if no intervention is placed?

If a species meets these criteria after multiple 10 year studies, then conversation measures begin. These can be from recovery programs, to restrictions on catch and import numbers. But in almost all cases, the conservation effort is put in place to ensure that the population dynamics of that species do not decline further "in the wild".