Thanks for this video, I think it's one of the best and most important videos I've seen related to reefing. Julian's discussion is good, the talk by the(ETA: can't believe I left this sentence half done; the remainder follows) industry panel, especially the boss of Quality Marine.
My takeaways:
Government regulations can be very arbitrary (but anyone who's seen these things firsthand knows this)
There are several organizations, generally composed of lawyers (either working pro bono, or hoping for a post-succesful litigation payout; and getting money from donations) with a cause, who believe their advocacy, lobbying, and litigation will "save coral reefs". Given the success of other organizations over time (in other fields), it's reasonable to believe that advocacy, lobbying, and litigation can successfully achieve regulatory results (whether or not this has anything to do with "saving coral reefs").
These organizations can choose what they target for complaints/advocavy/lobbying, and a number of them believe that the "aquarium industry" is a key "threat" to the "reefs". (as an aside, in some places commercial exploitation has quite destructively used cyanide poisoning, over exploitation, etc.). Saltwater aquariums are a niche hobby; there are not so many of us, we're not politically organized, and therefore we are an easy target compared to over development (real estate and tourism industry), ground runoff (real estate), oil spills (oil industry), navigational destruction (shipping industry), and commercial fishing (commercial and charter hobby fishing) - history has shown that it's impossible to go against these industries for "coral reef destruction" unless they do something egregiously wrong. There are also bureaucrats, judges,etc. who are sympathetic to these anti-aquarium organizations (big problem), as well as bureaucrats, judges who also have no real clue how to deal with their constant lobbying and litigation (an equal problem but not quite so dangerous).
The anti-aquarists have been successful in some areas. Hawaii has banned the keeping of corals, even at the hobbyist level, since 1999-ish, and said anti-aquarium organizations count that as a success because this prevents people from "cutting up the reef for ornaments" (which, like other things they say, are false and show they don't have any understanding of what they talk about). From there, we've seen the constant lobbying and litigation in Hawaii against aquarium collecting (protected by a relatively small collection industry in Hawaii; and for the record the collection industry has been excellent in Hawaii, at least for the past few decades), which after years of failure finally got a success by litigation in the current collection ban*. Now, this has gotten to Fiji.
IMO:
We do need to become politically active. Nobody is going to stick up for us, we are a very easy target. And our efforts can be tied to the pet industry, but at the same time we have to be independent of the industry. I don't like some of the worst practices of the industry (rampant collection of fish that cannot be easily kept long term in an average tank and which many ignorant hobbyists purchase - yellow tang is a great example, cynanide collection, overexploitation, the collector-distributor-LFS hot potato). Dealing with these will make our advocavy lives easier. I honestly would prefer direct purchase of livestock from the mari/aquaculturer or collector overnighted to my door when at all possible. But at the same time, it would be wrong to demonize the aquarium industry, of course, since we ultimately fund it. Aquarists need our own voice, but at the same time we'll have to work often with the pet industry, as well as maybe with other industries on a case by case basis.
* their big advocacy/lobbying/litigation point has been the fact that most yellow tangs in the hobby are collected from the Kona coast of Hawaii - the numbers collected are really large. The anti-aquarium groups further allege 1. most collected fish die within a year (they have a point here; I would much prefer collection based on specific request from retail purchasers vice the current collect-push down supply chain model. In an ideal world) 2. that wild numbers are way below what they should be (impossible to prove, and a decent google search will show this point to be a red herring), and 3. that collection has "destroyed the reef" IVO Kona because they aren't around to eat algae (pure nonsense). I will go again on the record to say that I wouldn't mind a bag limit in Kona).
Post edited to, well, edit the grammar and structure of the post.
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