Do you think Fiji, Australia, the Red Sea, Marshall Islands, East Africa, Indonesia and the Philippines will all eventually shut down?
Or maybe Hawaii will reopen in a couple of years?
There is always a chance. I thought Indonesia was done.
Fiji has shut down for most coral. I think they allow some soft coral export just not the USA.
I think eventually it is all gone. Rumor is talks from Australia is they thinking of shrinking exports as the GBR get worse.
Talk because of the lionfish the Caribbean areas may put stricter limits or eventually shut down. No one can predict the future but yea eventually it will all be gone it is just when and how fast. As price increases so does greed and poaching which leads to more deaths too.
Too me we need a slow shut down to allow ramping up of captive breeding programs. Having the rug pulled out leads to what we are seeing now and only hurts the hobby.
As usual this hobby is disorganized and some of those who have successfully able to captive raise fish wont share what has worked. Some places and people are sharing. Which is funny because their used to be a large group of breeders. That said we have came a long way in breeding different species but raising them in large quantities is different.
The hobby needs to do better and change their attitude. We need to do better collecting, in the supply channels, wholesalers, retailer etc. We need to be more organized or this will continue.
We need to stop looking at these animals both fish and corals as possessions. We need to care about what we keep and change the perception of what we do or these people have to much ammunition. They are animals after all. The perception of what the hobby is seems to get worse and worse. I was reading the comments the other day on a news article about the shut down and it was insane how people perceive the hobby. The people that want us shutdown use our posts here on the forums against us. Some have posted here, Facebook or even on YouTube videos.