It's not unlimited

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Quirkyeyes

In Memoriam
What really ****es me off about the saltwater hobby as much as I love it is the lack of care givin to the ecological effects of keeping saltwater fish we are really screwing up are oceans by taking all of these fish out but people just treat them like replace able objects like filter cartridges fish are not going to last forever and if we keep taking them out of the ocean there won't b a hobby left for us to enjoy I think we should make stricter collecting limits so we can continue are hobby while more fish can still stay in our forever important ocean to sustain it with the life it needs to flourish for years to come

:blown:
 
In some ways hobbyists have saved many parts of ocean life that are being destroyed captive breeding bangai cArdinals and other endangered fish that other wise would go extinct in our oceans or the corals we captive grow that may save damaged reefs and of corse all of the CBB inverts but what I see as the real threat is the fish we can breed yet like the super huge wrasse parot tang and angel fishes that could b in real danger if we over collect them many fish lives have been lost just by shipping deaths and I feel that these innocent animals chances of survival for the time being would be better for the most part out in the ocean . While the extra price may seem unsatisfactory because not as many fish will b collected and sold so higher prices will be needed it will ensure those purchasing the fish are really responsible enough to care for them as the normal person wouldn't pay so much for a fish
 
While sensible collecting limits can be quite worthwhile, they need to be just that, sensible and based on sound fisheries science.
 
billsreef said:
While sensible collecting limits can be quite worthwhile, they need to be just that, sensible and based on sound fisheries science.
Click to expand...

Sound fisheries science is the key. Bill, you probably know, but I believe that the orange roughy is the species of fish that became popular within the last few decades and almost got wiped out because we didn't know that they don't reproduce until they are near 100 years old.

Quirky eyes, please break your posts into sentences. You have some excellent thoughts, but many will dismiss them simply due to poor punctuation.
 
I have always found myself with one foot on each side of this debate. It is easy to get carried away with blaming the reef hobby for damaging wild stocks, but forgetting about the far greater damage done by cruise ship anchors and pollution - not to mention the massive damage done by tropical storms. At the same time, the survival rate of most fish removed from the ocean is dismal. I have always been in favor of banning animals that simply do not survive in captivity, things like non-photosynthetic corals, for example. OK, there will always be somebody, somewhere who claims to be sucessfully keeping these things, but the numbers still stink.

However, lets not lose sight of the success reef hobbyists have had at culturing coral frags. Not clue as to the stats, but I'd bet that the majority of the SPS corals we buy are aquacultured. I've been in the reef hobby since 1988, and for most of my time SPS were considered impossible to keep in a reef tank.
 
Harvesting from the reefs is renewable and sustainable with proper controls. There are hree things I can think of that seem to be left out in criticisms the aquarium trade is destroying reefs. The first is in many of the third world island countries the aquarium trade offers not only an economic incentive to manage their reefs wisely but also a means for locals who's only natural resource is the reef to lift themselves out of poverty. These numbers are old but in the Maldives in 2000 a kilogram of fish for food had a value of $6 while a kilogram of fish for the aquarium trade had a value of $500 and a ton of limestone collected for construction material had a value of $40 - $0 per ton but the same material sold as live rock had a value of $4000 to $8000. (1)

A second issue is criticisms I have seen never address the problems caused by the removal of the apex predators. A hallmark of a healthy reef ecosystem is large populations of both sharks and groupers which among other things help control the populations of herbivores (tangs) just like wolves and mountain lions control deer and elk populations and then indirectly the species distribution of trees in forests. What problems are going to arise if we ban the collection of tangs on a reef but do not restore the apex predators? Here is Texas we harvest more deer each year now than what the entire state wide population was in 1900 because we've eliminated the biological controls for them. Large ranches are told each year they need to kill a certain number to prevent overpopulation. (I can't help but wonder how much harder it would have been for lionfish to have gotten established if grouper populations were intact with their full distribution of juvenile, subadult and adult specimens.)

Another item I see overlooked is the impact of swimmers and snorkelers on reefs. (While there are divers that damage reefs all I've met are very sensitive to a reefs fragility and are much better educated than the some of the casual swimmers or snorkelers I've meet and I laud the resorts that are requireing snorkelers to use flotation devices so they do not touch the reefs). Beside the issue with physically damaging the reefs sunscreen itself is causing problems when the UV filters interfere with a corals zooxanthellae.(2) How many of the proponents for stopping harvesting on the reefs are also calling for a ban on sunscreen?!

(1) http://www.unep.org/PDF/From_Ocean_To_Aquarium_report.pdf

(2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2291018/
 
Sure pollution has devestating effects on the reefs but collecting on top of that only worsens the situation in truth
 
I'm not saying that this cant be done right if we help certain island country's realize better collecting strategys and how to let certain areas go I disturbed for breeding grounds others for collecting grounds and other for farming grounds then this could be done right
 
I agree we should restore Apex predators for the reef Ecosystem we can thank the Asian food markets for there depletion but maybe we should make preds harder to get our hands on ether way the natural chain of things was messed up by humans and never would have gotten that way if we let nature stay as it was intended but we didn't and we have to live with that reality and I am only talking about the tangs in trouble like shoal and other huge ones or yellows who only in certain spots have had there populations damaged like Hawaii
 
I think if tourist were informed what effects the sun screen has and that it is killing essentlly the sight the are trying to see that it could mostly be stopped
 
We must detirmine our values from our interests


value. sure I want to save the reef so generations to come may enjoy my hobby as well as see an overall healthier ocean and world as a result

Interest if I import these fish I can make lots of money selling them it won't hurt to sell just a couple
 
Quirkyeyes said:
Dude in Delaware there are no apex predators at all imagine how many deer geese And other critters we have
Click to expand...

This is straying off topic but actually I said biological controls not just apex preditors when refering to deer in Texas. One of the more important biological controls that can be reintroduced for deer and other mammals is the screw worm fly(1). Delightful little beastie that liked laying eggs on the umbilicus of newborn animals so the maggots would eat it alive, likes people too. In Texas there were years when none of the fawns survived. To get back on topic in ecosystems that have been studied when the apex preditors are removed the ecosystem suffers from an overabundance of herbivores. Why do you think there are fewer Yellow Tangs in Hawaii now than there were 20 or 30 years ago? What I read last year on this debate in Hawaii clearly showed the claims that the Yellow Tang populations in Hawaii were over collected didn't have any research to support it. If you know of research showing this please post your references.

Why do you claim the asian markets are to blame for the depletion of sharks? There have been dramatic stories on shark fin soup but the american consumer is certainly eating their share of shark. As I understand it another major cause of shark death is as "bycatch" in nets which is usually discarded.

Maybe it's just your disjointed posting but you seem to me to be totally unaware that many of these island countries started a long time ago doing what you are claiming we need to help them start doing. Tonga for example in 2004 or 2005 closed all collections for a while and reopened when it was shown to be sustainable without harming the reefs. From a 2002 report on sustainable developemnt in Fiji "Government's commitment to sustainable economic growth means that growth must not be allowed to lead to the long term degradation of the environment." and "Marine resources need to be managed "in a way that maximizes resource owner and community benefit whilst ensuring bio-diversity and conservation issues are taken fully into account" (2) And in 2005 Fiji chiefs were creating marine sanctuaries that included "permanent taboo zones" (3)

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochliomyia_hominivorax
(2) http://www.crc.uri.edu/download/Fiji_National_Paper.pdf
(3) http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2005/2005-11-04-07.asp
 
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