The Conscientious Marine Aquarist Foreword, Introduction, and Chapter One Introduction

Wooo HOOO! Our first thread.

I like that Robert Fenner started the book with “why do we do this?” His response, “It’s great fun” is probably most accurate, but his final justification was more inspirational. Humans only love what we know and we don’t destroy what we love. Next time someone gives me a hard time about the hobby, I am going to use that one.

When I read that he had worked for the largest mass merchandiser in the trade, I looked up his resume on line. I thought it was interesting that he worked as “a consultant and buyer for the mass-merchandiser PetCo in their bid to upgrade their stores, incorporating livestock.”

I was a little irritated that Fenner so heavily emphasizes that the responsibility for humane collecting falls on the shoulders of the consumer, but he is right. From a business point of view, money talks, and the consumers are the ones spending the money. Also, this book is directed at consumers so I would expect his emphasis to be on what role we play in the collection chain.

How many of us ask how the fish we buy were collected? How many of our MR vendors buy from MAC certified dealers? Honestly, I don’t even know how most corals are collected and what are the best methods? As a community, is there any emphasis on tank raised? What is the difference between tank raised, tank bred, etc…?

In part one introduction, the author does say that, “the vast majority of “anomalous” early losses of livestock are not due to user errors.” By understanding how and where to buy healthy and humanely collected and transported specimens, we are actually helping ourselves.

Lastly, Fenner’s direction to be “open-minded and properly skeptical” when taking advise was very appropriate for our first book as the book club idea was born in a thread where the issue of giving and taking advise was the main topic.

These were just a few of my thoughts and qustions as I was reading. What do you guys think? Anyone know the answers to my questions? Anyone have more questions?

BTW Froggie has volunteered to start the chapter1thread on March 18th.




Book Club Rules!!!

Please if you have not read the book, do not comment in the thread thank you - jhale

[clamcrazy]

i am not a member of the mr book club but i just wanted to say that this was one of the first books i read way back when and it really got me going in this hobby. if i remember correctly at the back of this book there was a pic of hands, i always use it as a reminder to keep my hands out of the tank as much as i can.

[alrha]

great post leslie and a great way to set the tone for the club.

regading placing the responsibility on the consumers, the difficulty with that is that the consumers are too large a group to be able to influence/control. Laws and such that can be enforced would seem to be the only practical way to have an effect, but getting such laws would likely bee too far fetched to even consider it
On that note, as a community with purchasing power over our vendors, it may not be too far-fetched ro set some sort of standard they should abide by - it wont change the world, but its a step, and if that step gets repeated in other clubs around the country and around the world, then you might really get somewhere.
Just a thought as i noticed you paid special attention to that idea.

[LeslieS]

I think it would be great if our vendors and lfs's would let us know how things are collected when the post what is available or put them on display. Then we could make the choice ourselves.

Are any vendors reading this thread? What do you guys think?

[ellebelle]

Sometimes I think it's hard to know how something was collected. A person collects a fish off the coast of East Africa. Then they sell that fish to a someone. Then they sell them to a distributor. Then our vendors buy from that distributor. Then we buy from the vendors. There is such a long line from collection to purchase, it can be hard to figure out how things were done.

From a personal perspective, I do two things before I purchase a fish or coral:

1) Ask myself if I can get it aquacultured. All of the corals I've purchased have been from other people on MR as frags or colonies with the exception of 1 coral purchased at NWA.

2) I ALWAYS check to make sure none of my livestock is on the IUCN red list. I do not want to keep any endangered or threatened livestock.

[LeslieS]

Quote: if i remember correctly at the back of this book there was a pic of hands, i always use it as a reminder to keep my hands out of the tank as much as i can.

Were the hands holding a fish? If yes, the picture is still there

Quote: Sometimes I think it's hard to know how something was collected.

Unless we ask the question, will anyone be incented to find out? I love our MR vendors, and I do not think that any vendor should be restricted in what they sell. I do think that they should try to find out how things were collected so that we can make the choice for ourselves.

Quote: 2) I ALWAYS check to make sure none of my livestock is on the IUCN red list. I do not want to keep any endangered or threatened livestock.

Unfortunately even if your fish is not endangered but is captured using cyanide, huge numbers of other organisms on the reef are killed. Who is to say that one of the bystanders was not endangered? :blurp:

Quote: it may not be too far-fetched ro set some sort of standard they should abide by

Those standards already exist. The Marine Aquarium Council actually has certification standards for all phases of the livestock chain.

Here is how to identify MAC certified retailers:

http://www.aquariumcouncil.org/

I have never seen any certification in an LFS, but I would like to.

Quote: Just a thought as i noticed you paid special attention to that idea.

I had to start somewhere :-) There were a lot of other things brought up in the intro that are worth discussing so don't feel everyone has to get hung up on this topic!!!!

[ellebelle]

I realize that even if the fish I purchase isn't endangered, the actual reefs ARE endangered. And clearly cyanide collection processes are going to hurt the entire reef. That being said, you have to draw the line somewhere. Honestly, I have had a lot of second and third thoughts about keeping wild-caught salt water fish PERIOD. But that's something I have to square with myself.

[ellebelle]

"Get online and find other folks with similar interests and start and "interest group" in your vicinity. (p17)"

to MR.

[digitalreefer]

Cyanide collected fish tend to do very poorly and have low survival rates, so it also benefits us not to purchase fish collected in this manner. This type of collection is illegal in many areas and so it is unlikely that a distributer would admit to this if they were collecting this way.

Unfortunately, there is a cost associated with MAC certification and it's not cheap. They claim a large savings due to a lower mortality rate of organisms, but assuming you use a reputable distributer, and your mortality rate is already low, their cost analysis seems a bit unlikely. This cost would likely deter most (if not all) small vendors from obtaining this certification.

With this taken into consideration, it does fall on our shoulders as consumers to demand high quality fish that we can reasonably assume are properly collected, or to purchase (when possible) aquacultured stock such as ORA livestock.

In addition, what we are doing right now by education and discussion, is an excellent step towards reducing the amount of improperly collected animals.

[Domboski]

Not a whole lot to talk about from the Intro but There are a few things i agree with and maybe one thing I disagree with.

His ideas of "mimicing in miniature" is something I feel strongly about. I have always been intrigued with nature but it was only after housing several species that I really became aware and interested in their natural environment and concerned for their conservation. I think as people learn about the special care of animals they come to appreciate them much more.

I pretty much agreed with everything he wrote except for one thing (it was only a partial disagreement at that) was when he talked about keeping butterfly fish that need to eat coral polyps. I don't want to be limited in what I can own based on the general consumer. I for one have always kept animals that others have felt "difficult" or "impossible". As far as my reef, I don't mind if I have zoo eating Nudi's. There may be someone who doesn't mind having a butterfly fish that eats some of their corals either. Of course this isn't the average hobbyist but it represents me

Someone once compared the marine hobby to me in terms of parrots / birds from the 80's. Keeping exotic birds was a "fad" and the demand for these pets was putting a strain on the wild population. As people became more aware and caring for the birds, they took more time to find a way to breed them in captivity. You may think it is easy to care and raise birds in captivity, but it was once thought impossible just like many of our marine animals. Heck, when I first got into this hobby, I never heard of fish breeding or Seahorses being raised or the term "captive bred". It is something that developed over time. ORA is a great start to what could be and I think some of you touched on how buying captive bred (even if a bit more $$) can help these animals.

I don't like hearing "impossible" and Fenner touched on how sometimes the amateur hobbyist provides invaluable information on keeping some of the marine animals. Of course, keeping a great white is the exception

Having said that, I do understand why people say "no" and "impossible" and that is because they are trying to protect the animal from the general consumer. I happen to believe when you tell somone "NO WAY" that actually may make them more interested in the specimen and want to give it a try. Sounds silly but if you think about it, its just human nature.

Holding vendors to a higher standard is a good idea but I feel the responsibility ultimately falls in the hand of the consumer. Even discounting animals, buying items you don't know anything about is bad practice although it may not always be as detrimental as buying live specimens. I can think of many electronics I had no buisiness buying that I either broke or never used. I wasted a lot of money

Thanks for starting the Thread Leslie and I look forward to reading comments from others.