Seriously? Has anyone seen this video??

[ophiura]

Whether people like it, or agree with it, the reality is that the hobby does impact the natural reef. Many scientists would list this hobby as being a contributor to stress on reefs and a totally unecessary "luxury' hobby.
In my previous life I was a marine scientist, so I have some real world background here.
It is hard to argue that it is helping the oceans. They would argue that saying we are saving corals for repopulating is a feel good argument that is circular. If corals weren't harvested, fish weren't harvested, then there would be one less stress on the reef.
In addition, hobbyists are seen as a major contributing factor to the introduction of invasive species. This is a hard one to get around.
To argue that it is relatively less harmful than over fishing or the souvenir trade will not earn much praise or remove the criticism.
To argue that we need LR to have a more natural tank...they would argue why do you need the tank anyway.
I am not trying to insult anyone here but you have to see that they would counter any argument you make, with, quite frankly, a very legitimate argument in turn.
In many areas of the world where there are reefs, people have seen reefs as their life blood, specifically because they often rely on them for food. So they would care if they are damaged. Similarly many get tourist dollars in areas with good reefs, which may be at odds with harvesting for the aquarium trade.
The primary argument to me falls under a couple of things:
- brings familiarity of an ecosystem and thus the desire to potentially protect it - aka the Flipper effect. It was Flipper, Free Willy, etc that were individuals in captivity that brought attention to dolphins/whales in the wild. In particular it helped with tuna drift netting issues. Though the same can not necessarily be said with Finding Nemo, which undoubtedly sent huge numbers of wild caught fish to their certain deaths.
- has reached a level where there is certain sustainability within the hobby so long as aquaculture and trading is promoted at greater levels. You must decide that it is worth it to buy (and spend extra) on either aquacultured or sustainably harvested animals. Otherwise, going for the "cheap price" does us no good as a general rule. It is hard to get around the very high mortality rate in shipping and transport and acclimation of nearly everything in this hobby (fish, inverts, corals). Definitely hard to come up with a good rationale for that when confronted by a scientist.
- Some scientific observations can be made in terms of coral calcification rates, etc. But overall most hobbyists are not contributing on this level.
There are good opportunities for using artificial corals, whether their marketing is great or not. For many people it is the better option. They do get very dirty (I too used the bleach and scrubbing methods). Most public aquaria do use artificial corals and for sure it is better than using real one's in most of their tanks! For those with big FOWLRs it affords some natural branches, overhangs, etc that fish benefit from, even if they do not have the LR itself. IME, it does allow for some natural behavior that actually may not be as easy to promote with just using boulder LR. You can also replicate some feeding behaviors that you could not do with live coral (well, you could, but the coral would be eaten

).

 

[reefkprz]

Originally Posted by ophiura
http:///forum/post/3204942
- Some scientific observations can be made in terms of coral calcification rates, etc. But overall most hobbyists are not contributing on this level.
I would have to agree with this most emphatically.
I hope no one takes insult by this but,
Most hobbyists are in fact contributing to the unsustainable methods by the buying "cheap", and in fact dont track anything to do with their tanks in a thourougness that can actually contribute in a scientific manner. maybe a bit of anecdotal evidence of various things from time to time at best, but in reality the overall contributions to the expansion of hard data is very minimal despite what the hobbyist may think (my self included).
I can hear some of you thinking, "but I share my expiriences" well that does help other hobbyists in some manner, but as for hard factual data, the progress from non science based research is very minimal, for several reasons, lack of exposure, lack of recorded data, lack of proper controll tests etc.
we can help by buying sustainable harvest and aquacultured specimens. in does make an impact however negligable, because we can amplify the effect by sharing the knowledge of sustainability with others, and that may in fact have more of an impact than any rough data your average hobbyist can gather and share. by spending more on these we can actually bring the prices down by increasing demand which will force an increase in supply.

 

[ophiura]

The key would be to make this at least like the FW trade, where very few fish/plants need to be wild caught. It is fully sustainable on its own.
Irresponsible hobbyists will always be an issue in terms of releasing fish, etc. And the damage done there can be catastrophic and ruin the name of millions of responsible people.
I would further add that those thinking we can reintroduce corals...remember this. For all intentions purposes most of our corals are just relatively few individuals that have been fragged (or will be over time). There is likely little genetic diversity. There is not much S-e-x-u-a-l reproduction to increase genetic variability. Which means an enviro perturbation that destroys wild corals would quite likely destroy any we "reintroduce." This is simply, IMO, not a good argument in addition to the fact that it is circular (we contribute to reef stress and loss on the argument that we can reintroduce later). Like the cheetah (which are all basically genetically identical), lack of genetic diversity spells almost certain doom. Let's not rely on that argument.
In addition, we are raising corals under conditions that do not in any way replicate the natural world, IMO. It is not noon, on a cloudless calm day, for 8-10 hours a day, anywhere in the world. Remember the big goal to release the 'free willy" whale ended rather tragically...he did not know how to hunt. It is not best to assume that corals raised for generations in these conditions could just be planted back at sea with great success. Maybe, but maybe not...let's hope we don't have to find out.
The way to avoid scientific scrutiny in large part is to make sure the hobby is sustainable on its own. Buy aquacultured, buy sustainably harvested, make your own stuff...and yes, buy artificial corals where it may be more reasonable to do so.
All of the other arguments can be easily shot down by most scientists who may be inclined to do so. We need to be prepared with solid evidence to the contrary.