Hobbyist destroying the reefs?

[Breakin Newz]

Does anyone believe that us hobbyist are destroying the reefs? We seem to destroy and capture an endless amount of fish and corals, what kind of affect do you think we have on the overall health of our wonderful reefs? I always though about leaving because I feel this hobby might be alittle to careless on the ways we go about capturing and making sure the species that we withhold thrive in our boxes...

Something that erks me a ton is when someone says,
"Well if the fish dies no problem! I will just buy another one!!" :cry:

 

[Aloha Corals]

I'm a little confused.... Since this is such a HUGE topic/issue here in Hawaii, i want to be clear. It seems you are saying that the hobbyist is doing the collecting/destroying?

Kevin

 

[denverjon]

I don't think we as hobbyists are doing the same amount of damage as other things, whether it be global warming, agricultural runoff, indescriminate fishing practices, etc, but we're certaintly not helping matters. You can't tell me that the uncontrolled taking of corals in Indonesia and other locations hasn't diminished the populations of certain species.

 

[Breakin Newz]

I'm a little confused.... Since this is such a HUGE topic/issue here in Hawaii, i want to be clear. It seems you are saying that the hobbyist is doing the collecting/destroying?

Kevin

Obviously not ONLY us in particular but it seems we are not helping in the overall health of the reefs...

 

[drainbamage]

yes, hobbiests are having an impact on the reefs- destroying? Well, I don't have the expertise to discuss the level of destruction being caused- but to say we're not doing any would be silly.


This is why I'm such a huge fan of the frag 'craze'- people are buying PIECES of a colony instead of the entire imported colony, and then putting in the diligence to caring for it. Even more so the 'high-end' or expensive ones. Too many advocate the older style of buying a large colony, then if it dies, no biggy, it was cheap enough to replace. The more value that are assigned to these chunks of nature, the better, as it will continue to drive people to take better care and understand more on how to keep them.

 

[BlazinNano]

In some ways I understand what you are saying but in other ways I disagree. The coral reefs off of florida are hurting. Florida does not allow the collection of and hard corals SPS or LPS. If they would allow the collection of some of them they could be grown in our tanks with the deal that everyone who buys a piece has to give a piece back one day. Now there are a couple people with permits who grow out florida "hard" corals but only a couple. What if that oil spill would have completely wiped the reef out? What would we do? Ask the handfull of people for pieces or ask the thousands of people in florida with tanks for a piece? By growing corals in captivity we can actually get them to grow in worse conditions from where they came. I truly think us as hobbiest care alot about the reef. I know if I had local corals and our reef was destroyed and florida asked me for piece so that we could rebuild the reef I would hand over a chunk of it.

 

[SoCaliReefin]

Coral collection for hobbyist has a much smaller impact on reefs dying out than global warming. If all the reefs die off hobbyist have a chance to put them back in one day when the ocean gets better. So I look at it as us preserving the reefs! Just my opinion.. :xd:

 

[tclipse]

Does anyone believe that us hobbyist are destroying the reefs? We seem to destroy and capture an endless amount of fish and corals, what kind of affect do you think we have on the overall health of our wonderful reefs? I always though about leaving because I feel this hobby might be alittle to careless on the ways we go about capturing and making sure the species that we withhold thrive in our boxes...

Something that erks me a ton is when someone says,
"Well if the fish dies no problem! I will just buy another one!!" :cry:

Yeah, that really ticks me off too. Especially with the touchy stuff like harlequin filefish etc... my thought is, if you aren't set up to give it a "good" life, you're a real piece of work if you buy it anyways.

I'm sure other factors (pollution, climate change, etc) affect the reef more than we do, but there's no question, we do have a negative impact on the reefs. Think about every LFS in the world, with all of the WC fish/coral they get in, and then add everything that died en route to the LFS from the ocean... and that's not even counting the live fish that made it home to our tanks. I bet the statistics would be pretty nuts.

IMO the hobby is definitely too careless about collecting, most buyers at the end of the line don't care how that fish got into the store's DT. The more stuff we can AC, the better.

 

[Aloha Corals]

I'm going to back off a bit on this thread and follow along. This is a very personal situation for me and my family, as well as friends and their families. I hope that it can stick to facts, and not hear say and false information on the destruction of the reefs. We already have one snorkel bob to deal with.

Kevin

 

[thewackyreefer]

I don't think the hobby as a whole is destroying our reefs. I do, however, believe there are people or companies out there that are causing harm to our reefs just to make a quick buck or two.

I also agree that the frag craze will be beneficial in the long run, more people end up with the pieces giving it a better chance to survive...

 

[tclipse]

yes, hobbiests are having an impact on the reefs- destroying? Well, I don't have the expertise to discuss the level of destruction being caused- but to say we're not doing any would be silly.


This is why I'm such a huge fan of the frag 'craze'- people are buying PIECES of a colony instead of the entire imported colony, and then putting in the diligence to caring for it. Even more so the 'high-end' or expensive ones. Too many advocate the older style of buying a large colony, then if it dies, no biggy, it was cheap enough to replace. The more value that are assigned to these chunks of nature, the better, as it will continue to drive people to take better care and understand more on how to keep them.

Only problem with that is that the demand for those LE corals is so high that the same amount, if not more are being taken out of the ocean. Lets say a morph-savvy diver is out collecting and sees a soprano look-alike colony, for example.... he's gonna smile, see dollar signs, and rip that entire colony from the reef. With a more generic coral, leaving a few polyps behind wouldn't be a big deal.... but when such a high value is placed on a coral, it makes the incentive to search for and collect that morph way higher... it's simple economics. There's a reason there are different WC magician/dragon eye/etc frags at the LFS's here on a regular basis....

I guarantee that at least a few morphs have been endangered/wiped out in the wild because of this hobby.... think about it objectively. If there were soprano colonies all over the place, would they be SO rare in the hobby, or would someone collect them to meet the demand?

I think all of us would be very surprised if someone could accurately measure the amount of damage we have done over the years...

 

[SoCaliReefin]

I also beleive we have harvested enough coral and fish to propagate and breed for the hobby to survive.. So I do not see a need to keep harvesting at the rate they are or they should stop harvesting altogether..

 

[Aloha Corals]

I think all of us would be very surprised if someone could accurately measure the amount of damage we have done over the years...

I agree with this statement. Our past is tainted. I'm sure most of us have seen the videos of live rock collecting in Fiji on Youtube. It's actually disturbing to watch them crowbar the reef. We have also come a long way since then. Cyanide collecting is a thing of the past in almost all areas of the world.

Even though we would be surprised at the damage this hobby may have caused and is causing, i personally believe it would be like comparing the carbon footprint of a moped and a coal energy plant.

Kevin

 

[thewackyreefer]

Even though we would be surprised at the damage this hobby may have caused and is causing, i personally believe it would be like comparing the carbon footprint of a moped and a coal energy plant.

Kevin

Actually seems like a pretty good comparison. Keep up the good fight Kevin, we all appreciate it.

 

[PR_Reefers]

IMO we do have a great impact on the reefs same impact we have on forests destroyed for wood and as both the hobby and industrialization grow we have a bigger impact! One could argue that even though, the ocean is far more vast than land. But the fact is coral reefs are only just under one tenth of one percent of the oceans' surface area (wiki fact). Taking into consideration the time it takes for a coral reef to form and the amount of corals/live-rock imported daily, add to that all the global threats from climate change, cyanide fishing, overuse of resources, agricultural runoff, etc, etc I'd say as a species we are most definitely destroying reefs, as hobbyist's i'd say we contribute to this. I once spoke to live rock distributors that import 10 tons of live rock weekly:cry:, that's just one!! and I'm sure not even half a ton can be restored naturally in a week!!! I've personally seen the reefs here in PR decline greatly in diversity and population in the last 10 years or so:sad:. In a way the hobby could drastically change it's impact if we changed to only propagated specimens and forbid collection of any corals we cant reproduce in captivity.... but then again brood stock is always needed and the hobby can always evolve to adapt new species,.. so it's really a complicated topic... plus there's many different opinions and views so... IMO humans as a species are the most destructive thing that earth has encountered:hell_boy: LOL... :tongue:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

 

[nixer]

there has been many discussions in the past on here about this topic. this forum is the most realistic about this topic i have ever seen really.
while i dont know where this topic came into mind, there is way too many tall tales told. meanwhile the truths are hardly a real story

 

[Demonic]

Well I do believe there is one good thing with us taking from the reefs. If something ever were to happen that were detrimental to the reefs then we could re-populate it. Although I do see this thread going sour quickly as they usually do.

 

[BlazinNano]

Ok this thread started out as are we destroying the ocean. But think of everything that has changed because people realized the impact. Would ORA have become so big if people did not realize what was happening years and years ago. Look at Marco Rock. They found away to give us live rock that never came from the ocean. I am not trying to cause a problem or get off topic but do we collect and kill more fish then the net boats one the other side of the world collecting millions of pounds of tuna a year? How many of us have a yellow fin tuna in our tank? I don't think we do anywhere near the damage as alot of other things do. Like I stated before we could put stuff back in the ocean other people can't. What if someone is able to breed a certain fish and in the wild something happens to where that fish is no more? The breeder can replenish the ocean. Just think of every tank in the world as a little breeding tank just like the zoos that breed animals and release them. There maybe be a couple hundred of the zoos but there are millions of us.

 

[kgehrke]

I honestly believe threads like this one help educate new comers of the hobby. Awareness of where the things going into your aquarium came from is very important. I also think some wild collection is necessary for breeding purposes, and currently to meet demand. It has definitely helped though that many of us have frag tanks, even if its only for the $$.

 

[CONSTANTNE]

Are we erradicating living reefs? Through fish and coral harvesting I would definitely say yes to some degree. But at what rate I dont know. I know climate changes also plays a role as well as other things. But at the same time we have been able to captively breed some species of fish. I also see people selling and buying more dry rock (like I did on my tank). So some good has come from our hobby.

Oh, and I for one dont look at fish as something replaceable. I do what I can to keep them alive. I once bought a 15 dollar clownfish that got sick and I had to buy 25 dollar medicine to keep it alive.

Now if only we can find a way to trigger coral spawning....