Sea Shepard turns its attention to our hobby

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Just to clarify, there are bag limits for ornamental fish in Hawaii. On top of that, 35% of the reefs of the Big Island (the main collecting site) are protected from ornamental fish collection. In addition, as I mentioned in my first post, about 70% of the Yellow Tang's range (and let's face it, collection of ornamental fish in Hawaii is mostly Yellow Tangs) is within the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which are completely protected. So, while some local populations of Yellow Tang in the Big Island may be at risk, the species as a whole is not.
 
In addition, as I mentioned in my first post, about 70% of the Yellow Tang's range (and let's face it, collection of ornamental fish in Hawaii is mostly Yellow Tangs) is within the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, which are completely protected
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What do people think when they regard information like this?
Its an opinion changer if you are an honest person.

What 70% of anything is so well protected, outa bounds and off limits?
Steve
 
Borge said:
better late than never.
Truth to be told, i know nothing about a whales intelligence level. Don't even know how they measure it in these animals?
I would have no objections if whaling was banned (I would LIKE to trust that such a decision is a correct one), I don't live in a threatened community where sea life is the only choice, but as of now; If I get served a whale steak, I'll devour it like any other animal without to much (if any) regret other than it was once an animal and we killed it.

@ the guy with mercury on his brain, in Norway such is not allowed sold or eaten (there are of course limits, witch is pretty low as a world standard), we have experiences of putting down flocks of animals due to exposure to irradiation, sickness and exposure to other pollutants.

I would however like to draw a few pictures for you:
Imagine a country or even countries who depends on something like dogs and cats. Where it is so deeply rooted that when now, when not in need of these animals, they are so domesticated and behave as a natural part of the family.
In china they eat everything, even our domestic and smart enough animals.
Another picture; Image these countries again seeing Animal planet and the animals police in the US. Seriously, I KNOW americans who do love their animals, but do you guys really treat our best friends like that?

TV and media does not make money on showing goodness, but rather problems and catastrophy and only the bad episodes of a hunt is shown, also the mistreated dogs and starved cats and horses so thin you can see trough them. Now, no money in showing happy dogs in a good big bed and a cat playing with a paper, neither a successful hunt where its over before it even started.
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Does the Norwegian government routinely test for methyl-mercury in whale meat? If so do they publicly release the results? The pollution problem is a world wide phenomenon.
 
There is a checkpoint at either at random intervals and/or routine, both before each deliverance/shipment before each load is accepted for further processing.
And same is for packaging out to stores.
Not particulary for that, but for lot of faults and problems.
See, Norway export two things: Seafood and oil. We don't have anything else ;)
so when Russia a couple of years ago just made an public speculation about some flaw in our processing system, it went on to be a BIG IF and HOW and WHY. I even think some processing plant were shut down, not to proof, but speculation, no fault were ever discovered.
That is one of the reasons Norwegian seafood is widely sought after internationally and why we export ... something like 90% of our seafood products.
 
If you want to see a specific person destroying the ocean life in Hawaii, an Episode of Dog the bounty hunter showed his son Leland taking a dead fish out of his aquarium, going out to the beach at night, and netting himself a new one... he even said they die all the time... on national TV!
HE should be forced to take his tank down...
 
That article made me feel guilty, perhaps rightfully so. Our trade is gradually moving towards sustainability, aquaculturing of the vast majority of marine species hasn't been achieved, but with some of the staples it has been (ie some species of clownfish, etc.) The movement for coral conservation in our hobby is difficult because of pricing and te fact that corals do not exactly grow that quickly. But maybe this is just a wakeup call that gratification should be delayed. That we should all boycott wild-harvested corals in favor of aquacultured ones that will take years to grow. It's unpleasent but is somewhat of an option.

I think the biggest problem with attempted aquaculture is that it simply costs too much without enough of a return for growers and stores.

I'd like to see our hobby be sustainable, I'm not sure that is possible. While safer methods of collecting reef fish are in use in some places and do not damage the reef as much the argument that it is still depleting the fish stocks of reefs is potentially valid. I don't have data available right in front of me to confirm it, but the reasoning is sound.

Maybe making our hobby sustainable can be achieved via fishing seasons, only allowing certain species to be collected every other year on a rotating basis to allow the population to rebound somewhat. Also a size limitation, allow collection of the smaller ones, leave the BOFFs alone (Big Old Fecund Females).

We talked about a similar issue regarding fisheries in an environmental problems class at my university, one of the techniques that allows a fishery to keep some manner of sustainability or at least to bolster its numbers is by making swaths of the ocean protected. Several protected zones seperated by fishable areas. This allows a refuge for BOFFs which produce far more offspring than the smaller ones and increases the life expectency of the fish evidenced by the fact that the surrounding unprotected zones see a great increase in fish caught by fishermen as well as the average size of the fish. Maybe this could be applied to the reefs. Make zones where NOTHING at all can be harvested, caught, etc. that are surrounded by catchable areas.

Overall if we want the hobby to continue we need to be conscious of what we buy, who we buy it from, and whether or not it was aquacultured. The Govt of Hawaii needs to play a much larger and active role in defending its fish populations and limiting its catches realistically with strong enforcement. But seeing as how this apparently isn't happening (According to that article) the responsibility will rest with us for now.

I love my fish, my reef, and all its inhabitants. I want others to be able to experience the fun we all have in 50 or 100 years.
 
Mr. Fish said:
Loved the south park episode. And I have to laugh that on the very channel that whale wars is on I have seen Bear Grylls and the other "survival shows" brutally kill hundreds of animals for no more than entertainment purposes. Maybe the Sea Shepherd should spend his time following Bear around and throwing stink bombs at him every time he tries to bite the head off a snake, rather than blindly attacking the aquarium hobby.
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+1! I hate everytime that liar kills some large reptile or animal so he can show how rough and tumble he is to his audience. What an egotistical jerk!
 
We talked about a similar issue regarding fisheries in an environmental problems class at my university, one of the techniques that allows a fishery to keep some manner of sustainability or at least to bolster its numbers is by making swaths of the ocean protected. Several protected zones seperated by fishable areas. This allows a refuge for BOFFs which produce far more offspring than the smaller ones and increases the life expectency of the fish evidenced by the fact that the surrounding unprotected zones see a great increase in fish caught by fishermen as well as the average size of the fish. Maybe this could be applied to the reefs. Make zones where NOTHING at all can be harvested, caught, etc. that are surrounded by catchable areas.
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That's exactly what's in place in Hawai'i and precisely why people are saying that Snorkel Bob is a joke for setting his sites on Hawaiian collectors.
 
Firstly, I agree that this article has the stench of propiganda and personal interest all over it. However...

I'd truely be curious to see the data if we could track every fish, from capture to aquarium, to see what percentage do actually live past a year. Between capture, packaging, shipping to wholesalers, then shipping to LFS or online vendors, then home with consumers. I bet it's a lot higher mortality rate than we would all like to admit.

I'm 100% for the passing of legislation to enforce proper and sustainable cultivation methods, protection of endangered species, tracking quantities of harvest, and stopping the removal of any/all corals and live rock from reefs. This would not only increase the sustainability of our hobby, but would greatly reduce peoples ability to point a finger at it.

Ultimately, I enjoy and will continue in my hobby being fully aware of it's impact on the planet. That is why I choose to only keep tank bred fish and corals. Everyone can do there part to make it as sustainable as possible.
 
I was reading somewere that if this global warming thing actually kicks off and the oceans become unstable for awhile they were gonna resort to aquarium hobbyist to repopulate what they can in the ocean. I'm trying to find the article I read it in. I believe it was a magazine.
 
No. To put it quite bluntly, anyone who wrote that hobbyists are going to repopulate reefs if warming wipes them out is more out of touch with reality than Snorkel Bob. More likely what you're remembering was programs like in the Keys where farmers are growing out corals to restore those lost due to local impacts like disease or ship groundings.

Restoring widespread loss is an entirely different ballgame.

Unless we're seriously underestimating the mixing and turnover rates of the ocean, once conditions in the ocean get bad enough to wipe out reefs worldwide it would take hundreds to thousands of years for conditions to return to normal. In other words, if we make the water bad enough to drive wild reefs to extinction, the water will stay that bad for longer than a restoration plan can wait it out.

In any event, we do not have the animals we need to successfully restore reefs. Reefs house a huge amount of diversity and they depend heavily on that diversity to function. Without the suite of herbivore, algae take over and smother the corals. Without the corals there is no framework and no structural complexity to attract fish. Without the fish the corals come under attack of algae and inverts. Hobbyists only house a very small part of the necessary diversity in tanks and an even smaller percentage of what we do keep has been bred in captivity. As it stands, if we put all of the species currently kept in the hobby together, we still would not be able to come up with the diversity we need to rebuild a functional reef from scratch. What's more, once reefs are gone in the wild, most of the diversity of fish and inverts we have have in the hobby would be gone within a few years.

Last but not least, the animals we keep are not even potential candidates for restoration projects. There's no way to know where they originally came from or in many cases even what species they actually are. They've also been exposed to animals from all around the world which poses a risk or introducing new pathogens to the reefs we're trying to restore.
 
"....once conditions in the ocean get bad enough to wipe out reefs worldwide...."
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I think at that point, we ourselves are already teetering on the brink and things get real fast.
Petty pretenses at "saving reefs" becomes a real struggle to save mankind.
I think there is no choice between "saving the ocean" or not saving it but rather between saving the ocean and non existance.
Steve

Steve
 
greenbean36191 said:
No. To put it quite bluntly, anyone who wrote that hobbyists are going to repopulate reefs if warming wipes them out is more out of touch with reality than Snorkel Bob. More likely what you're remembering was programs like in the Keys where farmers are growing out corals to restore those lost due to local impacts like disease or ship groundings.

Restoring widespread loss is an entirely different ballgame.

Unless we're seriously underestimating the mixing and turnover rates of the ocean, once conditions in the ocean get bad enough to wipe out reefs worldwide it would take hundreds to thousands of years for conditions to return to normal. In other words, if we make the water bad enough to drive wild reefs to extinction, the water will stay that bad for longer than a restoration plan can wait it out.

I'm going to have to go on a "link hunt" soon. Someone had forwarded a link (actually I think it was posted on another site) that was absolutely mezmerizing. It was a series of timelapsed clips showing divers in the pacific setting out HUGE racks of colorful frags in the middle of an area that had obviously been through a very devistating bleaching event. The timelapsed clips of the frags growing into huge colonies on the racks, then harvested (fragged), frags set in various locations of a now barren lagoon, and finally the new colonies they'd grown into.
I don't think we can entirely discount what we've learned and possibly what this hobby pushed along because it was made profitable in the last 10 to 15 years.
Do I think we'll some day dip into livingroom reef tanks to repopulate barren reefs? No, I certainly wouldn't take it that far either. But I'd like to think that our willingness to spend hundreds on a square inch of living coral has helped "facilitate" some of the grass roots efforts to repopulate reefs in distress right now.

In any event, we do not have the animals we need to successfully restore reefs. Reefs house a huge amount of diversity and they depend heavily on that diversity to function. Without the suite of herbivore, algae take over and smother the corals. Without the corals there is no framework and no structural complexity to attract fish. Without the fish the corals come under attack of algae and inverts. Hobbyists only house a very small part of the necessary diversity in tanks and an even smaller percentage of what we do keep has been bred in captivity. As it stands, if we put all of the species currently kept in the hobby together, we still would not be able to come up with the diversity we need to rebuild a functional reef from scratch. What's more, once reefs are gone in the wild, most of the diversity of fish and inverts we have have in the hobby would be gone within a few years.

Last but not least, the animals we keep are not even potential candidates for restoration projects. There's no way to know where they originally came from or in many cases even what species they actually are. They've also been exposed to animals from all around the world which poses a risk or introducing new pathogens to the reefs we're trying to restore.
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If these hippies weren't so detrimental to society they would really be entertaining. It's really sad that they try to stop anything they feel is wrong, spreading false information to achieve their agenda. Though the whaling part is fairly accurate, they are just going about it in a really stupid way.

This is really shocking but whale wars is actually quickly becoming one of my favorite things to watch. These idiots are very entertaining. They do something stupid every 5 minutes. Always talking like they are on some perilous epic journey. I actually laugh more watching this show than any comedian I've ever seen. Good stuff!
 
jameskb said:
I think the biggest problem with attempted aquaculture is that it simply costs too much without enough of a return for growers and stores.
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Might not want to let ORA, C-Quest and a host of smaller companies know that. They're happy spending their returns. :)

Jeff
 
If it bleeds it leads,.
If it dies it flies.
If its good...and everything goes nicely.....its boring and not worth reporting.
Steve
"Palabras con luz"
Great great statement---- now lets all watch 5 honky kidz from Jersey get rich at our own expense.
Cmon man for real-- Bob Barker!!!
 
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