Era of MAC certification begins.

[Kalkbreath]

What we have is a problem without a solution........There is no way the divers can collect enough fish without juice, to supply the demands of the hobby! Steve Im sure you know how hard it is to flush out fish from their hiding into barrier nets! What we need is a new Ecco friendly juice. Also net caught fish are MORE stressed not less .....without the use of a tranquilizer fish are scared to death and bang around in the buckets for hours, just like humans would be in the operating table during an operation.....Without somthing to calm us out.!
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[flameangel1]

Kalk,
Just a suggestion -why don't YOU go over and see the collections/how the natives live/how the food and hobby fish are collected/how the ACTUAL reefs now look, etc-THEN come back and bang your head against a brick wall trying to get those "powers that be" to HEAR you ????

Some of us are just "burned out" from trying to talk to/with "the powers that be" who are far MORE concerned with "raising money"--"don't want to upset anyone"-- keeping the "status quo" as far as making MONEY on the DEMANDS of this hobby versus what is REALLY important here-- committee after commitee, etc.etc. etc.

Yes, I am a LFS, but just sick of this "demands of the hobby" crap, at the expense of the environment. We are damned lucky to get ANY of these animals and it is about time that everyone stopped taking it for granted.

And, Personally, I would rather the government took over instead of "service people"/ board members who aren't even in this hobby anymore/ and the "don't step on anyones toes" groups. etc.

And NO- I am NOT for the government taking over our lives-but this is a HOBBY-not a necessity !!!!!!!

 

[clarionreef]

Wow Kalk!
You're as out there as I am!
Advocating illegal fishing methods that have already been banned and condemned by every nation in question is an interesting angle.
To be sure, drug collecting must be easier for tourists and amatuers but it has long been discredited as a false efficiency in collecting fish commercially. 20 years ago in the Philippines, we used to challenge the cyanide collectors on the other side of the village to contests. We knew without a doubt that we could outcollect them and would put money on it. It is exactly this sort of thing that won us converts and established a beachhead for commercial netcollectors. Any two divers of ours could take 100 centropyges a day with the nets...about 30% more than the cyanide fisherman. This is old hat. Cyanide collecting survives thru lack of alternative and training...not thru greater efficiency. Hundreds have come to believe this from direct experience in the Philippines.
Fishes without tissue damage to gills and stomach linings also suffer less stress, especially the 2-3 week lingering kind that eventually leads to their deaths.
Still, I enjoy off the wall thinking; how bout this one.
From strictly a business point of view, when divers are properly trained and supplied, commercial net collecting is cheaper, more efficient , more profitable and results in greater catches with greater survival. Thats why village fisherman will embrace it...not for environmental reasons.
[ Remember I said commercial collecting, not inexperienced scientists or tourist collecting.]
Steve

 

[flameangel1]

Steve,,
Glad you are posting on this forum !!
You have seen the side of this hobby that many people need to learn about. Hands on knowledge with irrefutable facts.

Plus, you post level headed information
(unlike my rants, when frustration gets the best of me)

 

[SPC]

Posted by cortez marine:

Still, I enjoy off the wall thinking; how bout this one.
From strictly a business point of view, when divers are properly trained and supplied, commercial net collecting is cheaper, more efficient , more profitable and results in greater catches with greater survival. Thats why village fisherman will embrace it...not for environmental reasons.

-Now thats just crazy talk Mr! :lol:
Steve

 

[dizzy]

Plus, you post level headed information
(unlike my rants, when frustration gets the best of me)

Judy, Steve has been know to rant with the best of'em. I think we all get frustrated at times. Ranting can be a healthy release. If it makes you feel better go for it, just remember e-mail lives in perpetuity.

 

[flameangel1]

dizzy,
Sorry about the frustration before.
New people came in just before I posted the rant,
They do business at a LFS 30 minutes from me.
They have a 75 reef tank--lg. Queen Angel-8 inch PB--Z.flavisens--lg Sailfin tang--Flame Angel--Maroon clown-3 large engineer gobies (havent seen them for the two wks since put in )--2 Moorish idols (both just died)--lg convict tang (just died) and I forget what all else. Yes, the Queen eats the Divisa etc but they don't mind and they stopped in on their way to that other LFS to replace the Moorish Idols. He will sell them two more too!!!
In a 6 month old tank !!!!

Yes, I did try to talk to them, but, they were NOT the kind to care one way or the other about WHY their fish died.
Who is at fault here ??
That LFS for selling them all these fish and the kind of fish etc??
Or the people for not caring enough to research the animals in the first place and again now ??

I very politely would NOT sell them a Beautiful Alveopora, any other coral or any fish.
What would any of you have done??

 

[Kalkbreath]

I said that cyanide fish are less stressed .during capture....not that they are not poisoned to die! like every zoo curator knows when moving an animal it is best that that animal is sedated. I said that we need a better drug, one that allows for animals to be removed from the coral heads without poisoning or banging on the coral ........to make the fish come out, And that the stress from being captured banging around in a bucket for hours, fighting with other captured fish etc. I am sure your a very good "net " collector and can out collect any one {thats why I buy from you !} but The idea that natives are going to beg damsels to come out of a ten foot wide coral head and not Bang on the live coral {Damaging the coral } is tough to picture?
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[Kalkbreath]

Kalk,
Just a suggestion -why don't YOU go over and see the collections/how the natives live/how the food and hobby fish are collected/how the ACTUAL reefs now look, etc-THEN come back and bang your head against a brick wall trying to get those "powers that be" to HEAR you ????

Some of us are just "burned out" from trying to talk to/with "the powers quote] .............................................................................I am actually more like you then you might think, Many of the spokes people of this hobby HAVE been over on the islands ...and they Know what the real truths are .Thats why I jump all over them when they Fail to reveil the WHOLE STORY ! I would love to one day head off to expose the facts first hand......and hopefully I will!
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[clarionreef]

Hello Kalk,
Whats tough to picture is the notion that there are any 10 foot wide acroporas left alive in the Philippines. Blue damsels are collected in rubble areas and with nets. They are super easy to collect and thats why they cost so little. In fact they are so easy and cheap that they suffer from the mass handling syndrome and die like flies from ammonia burn.
Bringing in 40,000 at a time from outlying areas and packing them 250 per box for export [as per orders of your favorite English speaking wholesalers ] is what makes them a dicey fish in the processing stages. Cardinal tetras are not so delicate either after the effects of abuse wear off. Intentional, premeditated abuse to try and get a cheap enough landed cost to market them to retailers for $1.10-$1.30 each. Thats the problem.
A new, less damaging drug to collect with is an old idea of "out of touch" scientific types. The only problem is, the drugs cost more than the fish. There's nothing wrong with nets. Legal, environmentally sustainable, morally defensible nets.
Nets allow larvae and unintented small organisms to remain unaffected. They are actually the most intelligent and scientific way to collect fish. All you need is a little talent . Something that can be easily taught and something that grows daily with experience. Kinda like typing.
Steve

 

[Kalkbreath]

How do you see this changing in the future?
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[clarionreef]

It may change slowly for the better but at a pace much slower than the rate of coral reef destruction and consequent fish supply depletion.

DIMINISHING RETURNS DESPITE GREATLY INCREASING EFFORTS EXPENDED OUT ON THE REEFS SHOULD CONCERN EVERYONE WHO INTENDS TO CONTINUE TO MAKE A LIVING IN THE TROPICAL FISH BUSINESS.
Thats why I'm so much at odds with the incredibily slow and inadequate rate of progress by well paid "institutional" reformers.
If salaries were pegged to results as in business, things might be different. But they're not. Then again, the trade set itself up for this by not being pro-active itself. Letting outsider non-industry professionals do it might not be so bad if only they could do it. Our exporters and importers have been so self absorbed, shortsighted and greedy that they not only have not supported reform, they have actively sabatoged it for many years.
The outsider groups have had the gumption and ambition to create infrastructure, a game plan and salaries for themselves to take a stab at it and pretend to do what we should've done all along. It is not surprising to find that they have a different standard of measuring progress than real "fish people". It is not surprising to see that they are content with mediocre results in the field and spin them into "successes" on paper with regularity. Funding institutions in kind become accomplices to this sort of 'conspiracy to approve of ourselves' and reward them with yearly budgets. Good paperwork, reports and proof of infrastructure are what they look for, not bonafide, sustainable fieldwork in hot, humid outlying villages where the fish are. Professional grantwriting is the paramount skill in question, not the ability to engineer the results.
Instead of being driven by urgency, devotion to the cause and passion, we find a culture of more calculating professional NGO [non gov't. orgnizations] types who pretty much create their own standards, timetables and priorities. If the fish biz goes belly up, they'll simply skip to the next project. Its a totally different mindset and level of commitment to doing the job right.
This was exactly the syndrome we saw in so many projects like Aid to Africa...Do you have any idea how much money was raised to save starving children in Ethiopia and Somalia without knowing how to actually reach the starving children and affect their lives? Money for the implementation of village projects, money for food, money for field workers? So much never trickles down to where it needs to go and if it did, a trickle wouldn't be enough anyway.
So, I'm proud to say, I'm apparently not regarded as a team player by these folks. We're just not birds of the same kind of feather I guess.
So what would I like to see happen??? For 20 years now...A growing movement of responsible industry fish people who can influence policy and accelerate progress while we still have productivity on coral reefs! If this ain't a forum for it, what is? Steve

 

[SPC]

Posted by Cortez:

So what would I like to see happen??? For 20 years now...A growing movement of responsible industry fish people who can influence policy and accelerate progress while we still have productivity on coral reefs! If this ain't a forum for it, what is? Steve

-But I take it that you really don't see this happening Steve, or do you think it is possible?
Steve

 

[clarionreef]

I hope for something to happen rather soon to unite and galvanize the trade to meaningfull action. The USCRTF meeting in just a few weeks may spark something as they did last year. That spark fizzled out by April but there were a few months where even the big wholesalers were mentally preparing for some major changes.When they sensed that there was no longer a gun at their head, they relaxed and went back to business as usual...proving the new found concern to be purely political.
I've been counseled to stay cool as to not wake up the issue again. I'm not worried about the issue so much as the reality. Obviously changes are coming. Its just a matter of how much more damage to reefs to be tolerated until we self regulate ourselves off of them. Our trade no longer works on hundreds of reefs in The Philippines and Indonesia. They no longer produce enough. Repetitive crowbarring and cyanide fishing year after year take their toll. We'll change or put ourselves out of business.
If we, the Bureau of Fisheries in Manila, the USCRTF, MAC or those who fund 'reformers' really want to, thousands of collectors could be converted in a year and we could get this industry sustainable. Left to their own agendas, myopic notions and self interests, the stakeholders and regulators probably won't change enough. An event has to shake them all and thats what I'm waiting for. If I could achieve such an event myself, I'd have already done it.
Years ago, I had a certain amount of influence with articles and photos of trainings and I used it til I was deleted as contributing editor of FAMA.
That event is coming...you'll see.
Steve

 

[jamesw]

Steve,

I would strongly encourage you to submit an article to the Advanced Aquarist's Online Magazine editor Terry Siegel for publication.

FYI - our magazine has as many unique viewers each month as FAMA does - so your effort would not go unseen. Not to mention that the magazine pays for articles - and pays WELL.

Terry's email address is [email protected]

Cheers
James Wiseman

 

[Eric Borneman]

Hi Steve:

Nice posts. And thanks James (I think?) for sending the link.

Steve, I worked with Ferdie Cruz in Jakarta and saw him again at MOC. He was a bit depressed because after allthe years and efforts training divers to net collect, many of them are going back to the old ways ways of milky squirt bottles. If the net were more effective and resulted in higher yields and better income, and given that they do have access to nets, why do you think they are going back to cyanide?

Oh, and as a point on "good" drugs, I think clove oil would be a decent option. Mark Erdmann has done some studies with it after using it extensively for stomatopod research, my advisor uses it for damselfish work in Galapogos, and the ironic thing is that its one of the major exports of the countries most involved with cyanide - it owuld actually help their economy, even if only a little. The problem is, I think, cyanide is a bigger problem with food fish - much bigger - and is thus made available, so if no wrasse are around, might as well use it to grab some aquarium fish lest the gas for the outboard is a total waste.

 

[clarionreef]

Hello Eric,
Its been painful to watch the last 10 years of net trainings predictably fail. All I can say is that I had nothing to do with them.
I trained several hundred cyanide fisherman before this time and my graduates have been utilized in Tonga, Fiji, Palau and the Red Sea. They did not go back to cyanide and have trained many more since the early days.
None of my original crews have been used by the IMAs or the MAC trainings. Because net collecting is superior to drug collecting there is little problem that the guys will revert back to cyanide. .. However, you have to actually know how to train the divers and not fake it. I spent a number of years living and working in collecting villages to do the job right. Its hard to answer for what has been substituted in place of the original training format and methodology.
I know Ferdie and spent time with him at the Marine Ornamental Conference as well. He confided in me that he didn't even have the 1/4 inch mesh clear handnet material that my old divers had and that his concerns about the field often fell on deaf ears. Ferdie was not a commercial fish collector. He was a middleman and field organizer. He does the best he can given the fact that he has very different skills than those required to make conversions stick. However, he actually knows more than the rest of the MAC and IMA office people put together.
Why do you think I've been so critical of the city based, top-heavy MAC and IMA approach to village net training? Ferdie works for BOTH of them and has anchored their net training schemes for years now. The fact that you have personal knowledge of his frustrations begs an important question. Do you think that MAC/IMA are unaware of his feelings? More importantly, do you think that the MAC/IMA approach is not only NOT expert but perhaps not even competent? How can such serious fundraising, lobbying, conferencing and campaigning go forth for these past years with an admittedly inadequate field training program?
And if the actual netsman training itself suffers from poor implementation how are they ever going to train anyone to the higher and better standards required for certification?
If we're going to attempt to train poor divers to the highest standards and maintain this enhanced skill level all the way to market, who is going to train the trainers? The failure of MAC and the IMA to establish even basic, qualified training teams is an alarming notion to behold. For years they have represented to the trade, the funding community and the environmental community that they are exactly what the doctor ordered to engineer a sustainable aquarium trade!
[Pointing this out has not been a good career move let me tell you.] There is a need in all of us to agree that we're all OK and that our trade is defensible and sustainable. Of course it 'can be' but how much time do we really have to get it right? MAC and the IMA have tapped into our need to have someone fix this thing for us. We have put hope over reason and resisted the more 'radical' reformers who have tried to tell us that we're wasting time and not really accomplishing that much.
Squandering this goodwill is kinda like treason to the real interests of the trade because it breeds cynicism and is demoralizing. Years go by as it exhausts the idealists among us.
Simply and honestly training the divers to collect and handle fish properly didn't have to be such a big deal. It is precisely the lack of doing this that should raise eyebrows and create a demand for higher standards of performance from those who claim to represent higher standards of performance.
Sincerely, Steve Robinson
former trainer

 

[Eric Borneman]

<<More importantly, do you think that the MAC/IMA approach is not only NOT expert but perhaps not even competent?>>

Hi Steve:

I don't think I need to tell anyone where my feelings lie on this issue. After reading what you just wrote, I think that if someone were to get us in the proverbial "bar with a beer" together, they'd close the place long before we were finished. I think the final straw of my disillusionment that pushed me to near contempt happened on coral-list. Yet another thread appeared on trade issues, and someone requested the input of a certain MAC leader. Mind you, this wasn't a potential supporting agency, not a general public appearance, not a call for a mission goal. It was an honest request for information for which this person had the means to provide it.

I thought, perhaps, just perhaps, for once, there would appear a human written response based on the fact that this person was, at one time, a scientist who actually produced tangible and meaningful work in the field. And what appeared in this private list, to peers with a request for real and truthful infomation, was yet another of the myriad of form responses generated by this group - vague stetements, precast, crafted like a president's state of the nation address, that say absolutely nothing but sound as if they say everything to those that want to hear something...anything...and make them feel like everything is going to be all right.

As you well know, it doesn't take a lot to be seriously affected by going out and seeing so many areas that have been exploited, often catastrophically, for human use. The pop pop underwater of another dynamite bomb pulverizing a reef to never-to-recover bits of rubble. To see entire tanks floating with dead animals because they are just a product, to see bands of white up a coral head, or whole areas dead as 55 gallon drums are poured overboard a circling boat to ring in a school. Sharks floating without fins. Countless containers of bleach washed up on shore. Not a single three pound snapper on a reef that stretches as far as you can see. And, sadly, that even feel good nets, unless wielded properly, can wreck a reef, too.

And, those same certain groups are not even talking about...and some might even say avoiding - mariculture and aquaculture issues, limiting or stopping trade in inappropriate organisms, or a consrvative approach until monitoring and management of resources are in place - and this is especially true of organisms for which the taxonomical name, much less life history/recruitment data are available....nor those fishes or corals for which 40-100% declines, resulting in some local extirpations, have occurred.

I just gave a talk in Connecticut on the impact of the trade to a fairly wide-eyed group surprised that real data existed from so many sources. I started by saying how the aquarium trade is not a primary threat to coral reefs, in general, by comparison with the state of the reefs-report-identified primary threats of coastal development and overxplotation - though aquarium collecting falls into this latter group. That for most species looked at, in terms of organsms alone (with some exceptions) it is, or is potentially sustainable. As it is, though, and when the state of the world's coral reefs, and especially since many of those where so many fish and corals come from are among the world's the most threatened (and biodiverse), we can't really afford to be even a small part of the problem...and as you said, don't need to be any problem at all.

I can only imagine your statements not being popular in some circles, and neither are mine. But, they are popular among others, and to the parties I care about....I won't say mine has been a bad career move, unless it means that certain parties discussed here and I are not exactly...let's say...best friends. I can live with that. I'm sure you can, too.

<<There is a need in all of us to agree that we're all OK and that our trade is defensible and sustainable. Of course it 'can be' but how much time do we really have to get it right? MAC and the IMA have tapped into our need to have someone fix this thing for us. We have put hope over reason and resisted the more 'radical' reformers who have tried to tell us that we're wasting time and not really accomplishing that much.
Squandering this goodwill is kinda like treason to the real interests of the trade because it breeds cynicism and is demoralizing. Years go by as it exhausts the idealists among us. >>

f'ing brilliant!! That pretty much sums it up.

Keep it up. Take James up on that article, too. It needs saying.

 

[Anonymous]

<<More importantly, do you think that the MAC/IMA approach is not only NOT expert but perhaps not even competent?>>And what appeared in this private list, to peers with a request for real and truthful infomation, was yet another of the myriad of form responses generated by this group - vague stetements, precast, crafted like a president's state of the nation address, that say absolutely nothing but sound as if they say everything to those that want to hear something...anything...and make them feel like everything is going to be all right.

Yes, but is this any different than any other cause battling against the power and control of 'the establishment?'

It just seems to me that the odds are impossibly stacked against a hobbiest base, as fragmented as we are between the 'cares' and the 'not cares' and the 'indifferents,' to actually wrest some form of demand or control over "those who are currenty 'in power' and yet do not choose to use that power for 'the greater good.'"

Where is the next level up? Assuming a force of consumers is never amassed with the level of influence to help rectify this problem, is there no end? To whom do we rely on to stop the problem if we cannot find the organization and common ground to do so?

Assuming the bulk of consumers cannot have the means to identify if the problem is being fixed, or even that there is a problem at all, what happens next? Do we lay down?

It's a difficult thing for myself, simply because me educating my customers on this seems ot have no affect. I see where everyone is frustrated about it, because the one resource that could stop our end of the problem simply does not care about it. The number one response I get to alerting customers about the subject at hand is, "So, what are you getting in next week?"

They want nice looking tanks, and want everything they purchase to do well and never die from anything other than old age, but they (as a whole) don't seem to care about where it comes from or what it takes to get it into my shop.

How does one deal with this situation?

If I've left anything out or am missing the point, please let me know. I'd really like to learn more about ways I can help...

Peace,

Chip

 

[clarionreef]

Theres the old saying..."Better to light a candle than curse the darkness..."
I've been doing that for 20 years and I now disagree.
We should focus a 10,000K halide light on it.
AMDA, MASNA.MACNA all represent this end...the import to consumer side. Instead of going along and rubberstamping a faulty blueprint for reform of the trade that determines our livlihoods we should generate much more heat and honest comment. Otherwise what are these groups for?
Macna Dallas is coming up.
A conference that brings together the best thinking in the industry on trace metals, sea squirts and coral fragging surely can generate something more professional and pro-active than the stuff we've been fed so far.
If it starts in a bar, so be it.
Steve