sharks getting bad raps

[Music]

I just spent two hours reading stuff on sharks on this UnderwaterTimes web site kinda cool so check it out. One statistic says you should watch out for coconuts. They kill more people than sharks do. 150 people died last year from coconuts falling on them, 13 shark deaths. One part made me really mad tho, nets to catch and kill sharks. They put them up around australia to protect swimmers. These nets kill 2,000 sharks per year, plus dolphins, turtles, anything that swims. Another story about a world record Great White caught 20feet, taken to shore for pics then cut up and thrown back in water, because it has no value to fish market, except fins. makes me so made.

[Caelan]

The unfortunate reality, Music, is that a large number of people do not value the lives of animals. They view animals as generally worthless nuisances unless a profit of some kind can be made from them or they have some 'cute' factor that makes them appropriate as companions. Fish especially are slaughtered wholesale with little regard.

I can't recall the exact numbers off the top of my head, but very high percentage of wild caught aquarium trade fish do not survive 'collection' and shipping. Being ignorant newbies, my husband and I have been reading extensively and were appalled at the 'acceptable collection and shipping mortality rates' and the use of !cyanide! to poison and capture fish, most of whom succumb to liver failure shortly thereafter. Today, I read a study from Hong Kong that showed that most new aquarists there would not be willing to pay more for a fish that was guaranteed not to have been cyanide caught.

Being a PETA member and having an aquarium full of delicate, wild caught animals in the basement was a very hard thing to reconcile.

I asked myself: the fish which you intend to buy are wild caught from an existing reef. If they were net caught, they are likely the minority survivors from a much larger population of collected specimens that did not survive. If they were not net caught, the fish are likely exposed to cyanide which will not only eventually kill them, but possibly the entire reef from which they were collected. Are you willing to implicitly support this type activity by purchasing these animals?

My answer was no. I am not willing to support that type of activity and alternatives do exist. With the obvious hypocrisy of the live rock which I could not find an acceptable replacement for, I am only going to purchase tank bred fish and grown out frags from existing systems. While I realize this limits my choice of fish and corals considerably, I think it is possible to have a very nice tank while operating within a harm reduction paradigm. Luckily, my husband's favorites, Clownfish, are readily available as tank bred specimens along with dottybacks and gobies and even seahorses which I am considering for a future project.

While I realize that this sort of wild semi-exclusion is a bit extreme, it was the only way to ethically reconcile the hobby for me. In a few months, when I have stocked the tank and hopefully am included in a tour, you'll be able to judge for yourself whether or not I was successful in creating an esthetically pleasing tank without wild caught livestock and inverts.

Whether you use wild caught fish or not, I think it can universally be agreed upon that we are all ultimately responsible for our animals and should try to give them the best possible artificial home. Information is the best way to hone my budding aquarist skills and, thankfully, both this site and the internet at large are rife with it.

I went snorkeling and noticed how gently the fish welcomed us into their world, as compared to the violence with which we welcomed them into ours. -Syndee Brinkman