Aquaria 'risk to tropical fish'

I know this was published in 2003 but I wonder what has changed in the meantime if anything?

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3151384.stm

Kev.

To put the article into context, according to the World trade organisation in 1994 approximately 350,000 marine fish were imported into the uk, some 2 tonnes in weight with a value of £900,000.00

Equate this with

5,000 tonnes of fish taken for bait from a single pacific Island group.

27,000,000 tonnes of 'by catch' discarded over the side of fishing vessels each year.

100,000,000 tonnes of 'food fish' caught annually.


The landed value of two tonnes of chilled fish from a pacific Island in the same year was approximately £8000.00


Clearly the aquarium industry and hobby has an obligation and duty to be conscientious and and take an active role in sustainable and ethical practice. I suspect it is far easier to single out the hobby as a target than to address the difficult and considerably more damaging effects of commercial food fisheries and global climatic change which we all contribute to.

Well the hobby has a very strong desire for rare fish, real nonsense, rare species should e left alone or banned from being imported.
The hobby has decimated the clown loach populations, these are almost always wild and are killed by the hobbyist and trade in their thousands yearly and we know they take a long time to reach maturity.

The hobbyisy changes their setups and rid themselves of fish when they get bored and not care where they go as long as they go so they can get their new tank up and running and this accounts for a lot of the demand. Globally thats a lot of fish yearly. The global aquarist trade has a huge impact on certain species of fish.



Mark

Seriously, the hobby is not to blame for fish population decimation. Take the Cherry barb or RTBS and other species that are alive today only because of the hobby. Granted, many species have a slow doubling time in the wild and attention should be paid to that but without the demand for them they would be left to suffer the fate of becoming extinct due to pollution/destruction of their habitats. Also, species that are known to not survive in captivity should be left well alone, wether that be on the reef or in a river. Captive breeding programmes have saved many fish species from extiction. Take the project that Keenan in Seahorse started as a small example.
This hobby, opens up a world of learing and understanding to new aquarists who then develope an appreciation for what they keep and can pass that knowledge on. It fosters a belief in caring for these creatures and keeping them alive at all costs. The fact that a hobbyist feels its time to move on to new things in fish husbandry wont make a dent in any given species population. Lets face it, who flushes perfectly good fish down the jaxx if they can get them rehoused by someone who will look after them or changed for something else in the lfs? There a few golden rules that should be adhered to when starting out in this hobby and if they are followed to the best of ones ability then we as the aquarists are doing these creatures a favor, and in return are getting years of entertainment and bucket loads of knowledge.

Jay