keeping captive marine oranisms

[Chris27]

I have a funny feeling that if you add up all the wild obtained coral that is sitting in local and on-line store holding tanks this minute, you wouldn't have nearly the amount of coral one large commercial vessel can destroy on a single "Sleepy Skipper" trip across a reef....food for thought....is this hobby really raping the reefs as much as folks like to think....I doubt it....

 

[organism]

Yet as these topics have come up time and time again I always see a few posts that seem to tie all those other things together as " the collective" damage to the reef. What? By inference some of you are saying that if the hobby doesn't take some regulation then how can those other things be regulated or curbed? Or, well we will never be able to change such and such so we may as well neuter our hobby Really? What wonderful self flagellation

Great post! Good to see some common sense on that one, I was getting tired of facepalming

 

[jerseyhokie]

On the Texas coast years ago they made it to where if you caught a redfish you had to release it if it was over 30" long. Doing this made sure there where plenty of redfish to spawn and to keep the numbers up. Today everyone can keep at least one 30"+ redfish because the numbers are so great. Maybe we need to try this in the aquarium trade?

Interesting idea, but due to the planktonic nature in which corals spawn, maybe not as feasible. Redfish populations will return to the same rivers each year and by protecting a population in a river ecosystem, you can grow the overall population.

The idea does have merit for fish collection though. The greatest benefit to the "slot" limit (fish had to be between certain lengths to keep) was the genetic selection it introduced. Traditional minimum sizes encourage us to take faster grownig larger fish, while leaving the smaller slower growing fish in the general population. By allowing the largest to reproduce we get "super" genes to increase growth rates and overall size. And in fast growing fish this can really quickly have effects. If a mature adult may spawn after 3 years, in 20 years you have potentially had 7 generations to selectively breed the largest fish.

I have limited knowledge regarding growth rates of reef species, but in groundfish, terretorial species tend to grow slower. Therefore, the genetic selection occurs at a slower rate. The best solution is likely to have a "Slot" collection size. Place the size so that individuals may only be captured after they have had one season to breed. The upper limit of the slot should be placed to encourage larger females, capable of producing vastly larger clutches than a first or second year spawning female, to reproduce until death. Juvenilles would likely have to stop being traded in a scenario like this and that would help some species who are collected solely for their juvenille patterns.

Finally, the greatest thing i can hope for the hobby right now is that it may potentially save thousands of lives in the future. One day we will hear that the next great drug can be developed from zoa toxins or anemone cnidocytes. The money the hobby invests into technology will translate into immediate aquaculture of the species for the drug.

-Tom

 

[greenbean36191]

" I don't support a ban on blah blah blah" is what does the person saying that actually support?

I support a two pronged approach. First, is in situ coral and fish farming- teach the people who are harvesting from the wild now to farm the animals so they don't lose their income and revert to more destructive harvests like coral mining. Farming corals stateside does virtually nothing to curb the damage to the reef because it does nothing to replace the lost income of the collectors and devalues a healthy reef.

The second part is to restrict collection to areas where it can be done sustainably. People like myself are concerned about other impacts on collecting areas because you cannot make a determination of the sustainability of collection without considering the overall status of the resource.

By inference some of you are saying that if the hobby doesn't take some regulation then how can those other things be regulated or curbed? Or, well we will never be able to change such and such so we may as well neuter our hobby

Huh? I don't think I've ever seen anyone make or even imply such an argument.

Great post! Good to see some common sense on that one, I was getting tired of facepalming

[facepalm] If you can come up with a way to sustainably harvest a declining resource without cutting the TOTAL harvest there's a Nobel Prize waiting on you. No one has figured out how to do it yet. It's not common sense.

I'm running out of ways to try to explain to you why, in a discussion of sustainability, you cannot simply consider the impact of the hobby while ignoring all other impacts.

Lets look at a really simple population. You have 3 chickens in a coop, but it only takes 2 chickens to have a sustainable population (ignore the sex ratio).

Scenario 1: You want to have a barbeque for Memorial Day. How many of your chickens can you grill up and still have a sustainable population? One.

Scenario 2: You want to have a barbeque for Memorial Day, but a fox ate one of your chickens in the middle of the night. Now how many of your chickens can you grill up and still have a sustainable population? Zero.

If you ignore the other resource user in scenario 2 (the fox), you get the wrong answer. You harvest an unsustainable number of chickens, even if you take just one chicken like you did in scenario 1, no matter the harvest method you use. You cannot determine the sustainability of a harvest simply by knowing the impact of 1 user when there are multiple users and natural impacts on stocks. A relatively small fractional impact does not imply sustainability, nor does using responsible harvest method.

 

[Chris27]

I support a two pronged approach. First, is in situ coral and fish farming- teach the people who are harvesting from the wild now to farm the animals so they don't lose their income and revert to more destructive harvests like coral mining. Farming corals stateside does virtually nothing to curb the damage to the reef because it does nothing to replace the lost income of the collectors and devalues a healthy reef.

The second part is to restrict collection to areas where it can be done sustainably. People like myself are concerned about other impacts on collecting areas because you cannot make a determination of the sustainability of collection without considering the overall status of the resource.


Huh? I don't think I've ever seen anyone make or even imply such an argument.


[facepalm] If you can come up with a way to sustainably harvest a declining resource without cutting the TOTAL harvest there's a Nobel Prize waiting on you. No one has figured out how to do it yet. It's not common sense.

I'm running out of ways to try to explain to you why, in a discussion of sustainability, you cannot simply consider the impact of the hobby while ignoring all other impacts.

Lets look at a really simple population. You have 3 chickens in a coop, but it only takes 2 chickens to have a sustainable population (ignore the sex ratio).

Scenario 1: You want to have a barbeque for Memorial Day. How many of your chickens can you grill up and still have a sustainable population? One.

Scenario 2: You want to have a barbeque for Memorial Day, but a fox ate one of your chickens in the middle of the night. Now how many of your chickens can you grill up and still have a sustainable population? Zero.

If you ignore the other resource user in scenario 2 (the fox), you get the wrong answer. You harvest an unsustainable number of chickens, even if you take just one chicken like you did in scenario 1, no matter the harvest method you use. You cannot determine the sustainability of a harvest simply by knowing the impact of 1 user when there are multiple users and natural impacts on stocks. A relatively small fractional impact does not imply sustainability, nor does using responsible harvest method.

Why not just keep the two chickens, and eat the fox

 

[organism]

Huh? I don't think I've ever seen anyone make or even imply such an argument.

You did, right here.

If we want the trade to be sustainable we have to do 4 things. 3) Limit our harvest so that the sum of all uses is below the MSY, even if that means we don't get an equal share of the pie.

 

[organism]

The best solution is likely to have a "Slot" collection size. Place the size so that individuals may only be captured after they have had one season to breed. The upper limit of the slot should be placed to encourage larger females, capable of producing vastly larger clutches than a first or second year spawning female, to reproduce until death. Juvenilles would likely have to stop being traded in a scenario like this and that would help some species who are collected solely for their juvenille patterns.

Agreed, I've always thought the best thing for the hobby as far as fish would be to have a maximum size at which they could be collected to keep the big breeders in the area. Those are the most important ones of the gene pool just for making it to that size in the first place, and they tend to be the poorest shippers overall.

 

[coralnut99]

Hmmm. They hunt foxes in the UK still? Or is it Wabbits?

On a far more serious note, my personal issue is with the resources that could be far better utilized in regulating the foxes out there. Maybe it's just me, but I see far greater benefit in putting fish and wildlife agents out on the high seas inspecting catches than giving out summons' to a guy with a starfish and hermit in a bucket. I sea far greater benefit to pushing legislation to change the way the fishing fleets go about their work than making sure somebody doesn't take home a 31" redfish. It's all about utilizing resources to the maximum. To me it seems like all the fuss over what people take home in a bucket from the beach is just not utilizing resources properly and doesn't focus on the fox ruining the barbeque.

 

[jerseyhokie]

CoralNut,

I understand that general point of view, but specifically in the reef industry, many of the reef organisms are not being caught to be exported. Locals catch and eat the fish, but its not an industry where fillets are being shipped around the country.

Also, in NJ, recreational fishing represents up to $2 Billion. Thats why discussions like this occur, because a 1/2" change in limit will drastically affect landings, on the order of millions of pounds of fish. Sorry to go OT.

-Tom

 

[Rascalson]

Why not just keep the two chickens, and eat the fox

Because the fox is the one being allowed, by the bank that owns the farm, to guard the chicken coop, and it doesn't want its predation of the chickens to be noticed or counted separately from other chicken population decline causes?:hmm2:

 

[greenbean36191]

You did, right here.

No. You quote-mined my comment to make it look like I was arguing something that I wasn't. Had you included my other 3 points from that post, it would have been pretty clear that I was arguing almost exactly the opposite point you're claiming I was.

By inference some of you are saying that if the hobby doesn't take some regulation then how can those other things be regulated or curbed? Or, well we will never be able to change such and such so we may as well neuter our hobby

If we want the trade to be sustainable we have to do 4 things. 1) Harvest from areas with few competing extractive uses (e.g. Hawai'i). 2) Avoid areas that are already over-exploited or in which the resource we're interested in is already in decline. 3) Limit our harvest so that the sum of all uses is below the MSY, even if that means we don't get an equal share of the pie. 4) Minimize the impacts of competing uses (i.e. push to reduce coral mining and poor farming practices) so that we can get a more equitable share.

Now how does saying that we need to work to reduce other impacts so we can get a larger share imply that we will never be able to change other impacts, so we should neuter the hobby? Those arguments are almost polar opposites. And which one of those points do you think implies that regulating other users is contingent on regulating ourselves first?

 

[Rascalson]

4) Minimize the impacts of competing uses (i.e. push to reduce coral mining and poor farming practices) so that we can get a more equitable share.

Except that most of the most damaging things that affect reefs are not "Uses". How many reefs are still being coral mined as in "blasted"?(I would barely call that a "use")

 

[coralnut99]

CoralNut,

I understand that general point of view, but specifically in the reef industry, many of the reef organisms are not being caught to be exported. Locals catch and eat the fish, but its not an industry where fillets are being shipped around the country.

Also, in NJ, recreational fishing represents up to $2 Billion. Thats why discussions like this occur, because a 1/2" change in limit will drastically affect landings, on the order of millions of pounds of fish. Sorry to go OT.

-Tom

Jersey, think it over. It's not the natives fishing for dinner I'm talking about. It's fishing factories that drag nets long enough to wrap around Hoboken 10 times (I grew up blocks from Hoboken, lol!). Those things get dragged across the bottom, and the word "bycatch" was born. We're talking thousands of tons taken and many tons trashed. It happens in every ocean and off the Jersey coast too.
There's a simple reason there's barely any shad running up the Delaware anymore, and the reasons are floating in the water off the Jersey Coast. As a kid we would catch baby cod running down the Hudson to the bay by the dozen in the dead of winter. Read up on the reason the codfish stocks crashed. It wasn't because we took home a dozen baby cod fishing off a railroad pier.
There's boulders out there rolling over reefs and open ocean fish stocks, and there's all this publicity and regulation over the hobby and a guy taking a starfish and few hermits home. Poor use of resources. Stop the boulder before it tramples everything and the hobbyist and recreational fishermen get blamed for it all.
And I'm not even gonna go down the road of pollution issues.

 

[GreshamH]

Except that most of the most damaging things that affect reefs are not "Uses". How many reefs are still being coral mined as in "blasted"?(I would barely call that a "use")

What kind of mining are you talking about? For industrial uses they really don't "blast" the reef. Bomb blasting is very destructive, but it's considered a fishing practice AKA a "use".

Muroami is horribly destructive, as us the use of chemicals like cyanide and bleach (bleach is not used for MO livestock but rather for food fish. Those are all "uses" as well.

 

[GreshamH]

Jersey, think it over. It's not the natives fishing for dinner I'm talking about. It's fishing factories that drag nets long enough to wrap around Hoboken 10 times (I grew up blocks from Hoboken, lol!). Those things get dragged across the bottom, and the word "bycatch" was born. We're talking thousands of tons taken and many tons trashed. It happens in every ocean and off the Jersey coast too.
There's a simple reason there's barely any shad running up the Delaware anymore, and the reasons are floating in the water off the Jersey Coast. As a kid we would catch baby cod running down the Hudson to the bay by the dozen in the dead of winter. Read up on the reason the codfish stocks crashed. It wasn't because we took home a dozen baby cod fishing off a railroad pier.
There's boulders out there rolling over reefs and open ocean fish stocks, and there's all this publicity and regulation over the hobby and a guy taking a starfish and few hermits home. Poor use of resources. Stop the boulder before it tramples everything and the hobbyist and recreational fishermen get blamed for it all.
And I'm not even gonna go down the road of pollution issues.

Its not uncommon at all for MO collectors to be also be fisherman (for food fish). In fact it's been estimated that CN use is much greater for "live reef food fish" then for MO collections.

Blast fishing is not for MO fish either, it's a food fish practice. Muroami isn't for MO collections either.

 

[organism]

No. You quote-mined my comment to make it look like I was arguing something that I wasn't. Had you included my other 3 points from that post, it would have been pretty clear that I was arguing almost exactly the opposite point you're claiming I was.

I didn't include them because 1-3 were all essentially about limiting the hobby and 3 was the most direct. What 4 says and the chronological order doesn't change what 3 said no matter how I quote it, but if I misinterpreted it then my apologies.

The main thing is the other impacts to reefs are socio-economic in origin. The only way we can fix the other issues is to make the resource worth more to the people in those countries, which means paying the collectors 3-4x what they're getting now. Then the indigenous people there will have a vested interest in keeping the resource better managed, and chances are you'd see a pretty quick change.

Thing is we don't pay them enough to care, and it would nuke the hobby if everyone had to pay 500%+ more for a frogspawn. The argument could be made that our demand to exploit those 3rd world people for the cheapest labor and livestock we can get is hurting the reefs just as much as dynamite fishing and deforestation.

 

[billsreef]

Why not just keep the two chickens, and eat the fox

Because cannibalism is generally frowned upon

 

[Chris27]

Because cannibalism is generally frowned upon

So's counting cards and ..................on an airplane........good thing the local SEAL team here got Bin Laden.......

 

[reefmanmatt]

I disagree with that logic, that's kind of like saying that since there's a water shortage in your neighborhood and your block only has 10,000 gallons, but your neighbor uses 9,990 gallons to water his lawn, that the 100 gallons you use to eat and shower with is unsustainable. What's unsustainable no matter how you do it is your neighbor using it all, the fact that there's only crumbs left for everyone else that has an equal right to the resource doesn't make those crumbs unsustainable since they're part of a much bigger picture.

Just because one guy's eating all the pie, it doesn't mean the people that ate one spoonful are in the wrong because there was only half a spoonful left. What needs to be addressed is the guy eating all the pie.

so what your saying is : just bust the big one off the top of that new reef for me ! why conserve oil , they can always pump more ? how do you think your government works ???? if you think having crumbs is unfair .... well then you grew up better than most of us . i.m.o . just because something isnt gone yet doesnt mean its not giving its all to stay afloat _ how many more giant oil spills will our oceans eat up ? probably hundreds , but whos to say all the same life will exist once we are done destroying ? this is where the famous old saying (which i read about 76 times yesterday) the straw that broke the camels back comes into play . nothing will ever happen in our favor if we dont agree on SOMETHING and get organized , but something will happen sooner than later . this has been the downfall of american since the beginning :wavehand: matt -

 

[reefmanmatt]

i didn't include them because 1-3 were all essentially about limiting the hobby and 3 was the most direct. What 4 says and the chronological order doesn't change what 3 said no matter how i quote it, but if i misinterpreted it then my apologies.

The main thing is the other impacts to reefs are socio-economic in origin. The only way we can fix the other issues is to make the resource worth more to the people in those countries, which means paying the collectors 3-4x what they're getting now. Then the indigenous people there will have a vested interest in keeping the resource better managed, and chances are you'd see a pretty quick change.

Thing is we don't pay them enough to care, and it would nuke the hobby if everyone had to pay 500%+ more for a frogspawn. The argument could be made that our demand to exploit those 3rd world people for the cheapest labor and livestock we can get is hurting the reefs just as much as dynamite fishing and deforestation.

exactly !!!!!