Living in thailand (where alot of your tangs and lionfish....lol, come from) I have to say I did witness alot of what happens to a reef first hand due to over-exploitation and degradation. I firmly agree that any person from thailand would also back me up on what I'm about to post.
I am a very avid reef enthusiast. Theres just something about having a little piece of the sea in my room that really helps me sleep at night. That being said, I don't think anyone of us could lie to themselves and say what we do isn't physically destroying the natural reef. I have actually witnessed one of these collection trips and I can tell you it ain't pretty in the slightest. Thankfully no one actually uses cyanide nowadays here cus there are litterally too few reefs left to kill them for a few fish.
In the end, what we CAN do is offset our destruction, even if by a little bit. We don't have to all become conservationists or activists or anything. In the end, if you really wanna help, help by researching, being responsible, taking things seriously, supporting people who are doing the work of trying to maintain and preserve what I believe all reef keepers love, which is basically the ocean. (If you don't love the reef, why spend thousands of perfectly good money on some glass with water in it?).
On a side note, its very funny to read some comments on here. I was once like that too, but the truth is that we humans have the utmost destructive capability of numbers and intelligence that we can literally change our environment so much faster than it can adapt to us. Which is pretty much the basis of civilization. Yes, what some of you on here is definitly true, nature will definitly adapt to us, even the oceans. As a matter of fact, i have seen this too, in phuket. But the change is most likely not going to be pretty in your eyes. Alot of the shallow coastal reefs there are now literally what some of your tanks would look like without a phosphate reactor and overfeeding: over runned by algae.
The ocean will always be here, as you say: long after we're dead. But what alot of us are trying to do is preserve whats beautiful and whats ecologically and economically important, not only for us but many of us are now thinking about what we leave behind for our kids or grandkids (something very particular to human beings). So unless you really love eating tangs and sand gobies, Theres not alot to benefit us from killing off CORAL reefs.
Ps: there are now whole beaches in the tropics that have become macro algae dominated, feeding off water run-offs rich with phosphate and nitrITE)
Personally, i donate to help ecological preservations and spend alot of my time diving and collecting data for research
Edit: not alot of thais actually buy any of our own wild collected fish anymore since we can get them much cheaper from indonesia, so maybe in 50 years time, we'll be the only ones left with a reef?
