Looking forward to more updates Copps!
If you ever come to Sydney Australia, I'd love to meet you and show you around some of our not so impressive LFS....
Thank you! There was some chatter and communication with your club there in Sydney and another one... I think Queensland... about bringing me out to speak... but it never went anywhere... are you in your club there? Either way... I'll eventually make it out there... unfortunately you guys are just about exactly half way around the world from me...
great thread, Copps, but I thought the Navy motto was 'a girl in every port', not 'a rare fish collector...'!
You may want to look on another board for that... and besides... I'm a contractor.
Awesome thread as aways John. I remember those good ole' days. I was one of the few crazy ones who bought a cb pair from Frank.
One question John, and I don't mean to hi-jack your thread; one of my dream fish is a juvenile Debelius Angel. Do you ever see that fish becoming available in the hobby?
Debelius is found in lesser depth than narocsis,peppermint.....perhaps there are no rebreather divers acting in the aquarium industry in that region(mauritius-reunion-madagascar)....so i think someday we may see them coming in numbers
once serious collection is started...
Will Centropyge debelius ever be available in the hobby again? Very possibly... Will Centropyge debelius ever be available in the hobby in numbers? Never wild... or at least not anytime soon... there is a much greater chance of narcosis and boylei being available in numbers... and by the way all of this talk is in regards to wild fish... obviously with captive breeding anything could then become available in numbers.
It's true debelius can be found shallower than narcs and peppermints... with the most shallow being around 150 feet... but they are rare... and while they have been documented in a few places they have still not been found anywhere in numbers... debelius were targeted by the original diver who discovered them for over a decade and sold to our trade, and he never exported more than a dozen in a calendar year... and usually much less. They may have a population stronghold somewhere, but that has yet to be discovered... boylei and narcosis are much more common at depth and have a much greater range. The good thing is that there is regular collection now at Mauritius, but they are not even close to diving the depths needed to find debelius... many people have sort of taken for granted much of the deep water collection, but this is an insanely risky venture and for every rebreather diver properly and technically trained to do this at depth there are dozens of people diving just air going to these depths and killing or paralyzing themselves... Rich Pyle himself nearly killed himself doing this at age 19, and to this day has a tingling in his legs... for a good read check out this article by Rich...
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/research/treks/palautz97/cmd.html
Here's a shot from one of my recent Hawaii trips in Rich's office... sitting on his desk happened to be the holotype Centropyge abei that he's holding in his hand... in the center is John Earle... another deep rebreather diver with many contributions to ichthyology... wrasse nuts now know well Cirrhilabrus earlei...
John- another informative and entertaining thread. I have participated in your other threads and there is still one nagging question I have... Who takes care of all your tanks when you are globetrotting around the world?
My father has been invaluable with this... he's been retired from United now for a number of years (pilots had mandatory retirement at 60 until recently), he lives within a couple miles of us... when I went off to college he took over many of my systems and got into the freshwater hobby pretty hardcore himself... he's taken care of them for years now and I have amazing confidence in him... my seven year old son is in training also, but that won't help on family trips... my wife is great in so many ways, but I can barely get her to check if there is water in the tank or the fish are swimming!:lol2:
Anyway... I need to get caught up and post more Japan photos and all of the Guam ones this weekend... for now here's a shot of an afternoon charter we did on one of the weekends... five hours of fishing and we landed 38 fish! Nineteen mahi and nineteen skipjack tuna... although you'll only count seventeen skipjack, as we had to cut up two of them for more mahi bait!
Copps
