Cyanide and coral reefs

[PeterIMA]

Wade, In a purely scientific sense more research is always a good idea. My question had more to do with: "Isn't five or six cyanide effects on corals papers and about 100 cyanide effects on fish papers enough to convince everyone that cyanide is harmful and should not be used by collectors and/or fishermen?" What we actually need is the magic bullet that puts an end to its use.

Peter

 

[naesco]

Wade, In a purely scientific sense more research is always a good idea. My question had more to do with: "Isn't five or six cyanide effects on corals papers and about 100 cyanide effects on fish papers enough to convince everyone that cyanide is harmful and should not be used by collectors and/or fishermen?" What we actually need is the magic bullet that puts an end to its use.

Peter

Peter the magic bullet is economic.
When the industry is threatened with closure to American markets, than and only than will changes come.
Everything else has been tried and notwithstanding the excellent efforts with hugh personal sacrifice of reformers, they failed.
REEForm will bring an end to the use of cyanide.

The time has come for all reformers to say "I will not allow another square metre of reef to be poisoned"
"I will not allow another fish that has been caught with cyanide to be imported into my country"
"This insanity must stop and those that perpetrate it must be stopped NOW"

REEForm

 

[Kalkbreath]

Funny how it took twenty years to come up with this ...........Cyanide kills coral ...yes, but how much coral does it kill out of the lab?? A small spot here a another spot there in the wild .........Wow even a complete coral head there!.............the reason its taken twenty years to prove {IN a LABORATORY}. is that there is so little evidence in the real word.......... a boat kills coral......Parrot fish scare millions of corals ...Storms killl billions of corals............yes Billions! The real point is how much coral do cyanide fishermen harm and how few of those cyanide fishermen are hobby fishermen..........? It seems twenty percent of every single fish in some cyanide testing have turned up? But most of the fish in the test many agree are almost never collected by hobby fishermen with juice? Even fish NEVER collected by hobby fishermen Have tested positive}FISH SO UGLY THEIR IS NO hobby MARKET and of no value for food .......This can only mean that 25% of Mandarins and clownfish are being "JUICED by people other then this hobby's collectors .........again yes enough cyanide in a test aquarium will no doubt harm the corals...{so will PISS}....but did this test also kill all of the fish in the test tank as well?{WHAT FISH } If it did kill the fish or there were no fish .then it does not pose a good example of the real world.......When pet fish collectors collect fish at least SOME of the fish remain ALIVE.{AGREE?}..and how do you know if the level was safe for at least some of the fishto survive if there were no fish in the test ?.Do a test correctly or dont do it at all SECOND Funny how still after twenty years not one photo of a dead reef or of a "BIGFOOT" ..........just a few spotty corals{VAST CORAL DEATH?} and foot imprints {BIGFOOT}? Why is it that no one can get a video of the THOUSANDShobby fish collectors collecting with juice and the subsequent white coral reefs..? I dont care if you can recreate a Bigfoot in a laboratory ............Its the real word that counts.......... :wink: :roll:Im not saying that cyanide cannot kill reefs.......only that it has not ...........And the few examlpes of "HARM " is LESS then a group of bump head parrot fish ...............eat in a single day.......... :wink:

 

[PeterIMA]

Kalk, You amaze me.

Cevino did some field studies (as I previously stated). So did Dr. Ross Jones (he developed the PAM flourescence technique to diagnose coral exposure to cyanide for field use).

Most of Cervino's experiments involved dipping the corals into the test solutions in small tanks then returning them to clean water. No fish were in the tanks containing the test solution. However, in some of his earliest experiments, he dosed corals and put them back into a large aquarium in a local pet shop. He described how the fish nipped at the corals, then died within the next half hour. The problem with assessing damage to reefs exposed to cyanide is that the fishermen in the area use dyanamite and other destructive fishing methods (so it is difficult to separate the damage caused by cyanide from the other impacts). Cervino (see his message posted yesterday) is willing to go back and dose a large area with cyanide and do "more studies". Is the trade willing to fund this research?

As far as reef damage from cyanide both Cervino and I have photographs. I guess the level of "proof" that you require is more than what the reviewers of scientific papers require (e.g. Cervino paper)

Peter Rubec

 

[John_Brandt]

James Cervino sent this to me to post here
***************************************

MAC affiliate WROTE: "It can take decades for reefs to again become hospitable homes for fish and for zooxanthellae to repopulate corals, he said."

Is Cervino suggesting that it can take decades for bleached coral to regain lost zooxanthellae? Wouldn't it die or be killed before then?


John Brandt MASNA MAC CMAS-Chicago


CERVINO: The quote from the press release states: Cervino’s research showed. It can take decades for reefs to again become hospitable homes for fish and for zooxanthellae to repopulate corals, he said.


Cervino reply to quote: The quote I claimed is evident in many reefs of the Pacific. As you can see Mr Brandt, I said "It can" in the first sentence. My choice of lexicons was correct in that if corals are continually dosed with NaCN COUPLED with other anthropogenic stresses as I have seen ie. nutrient pollution and temperature related coral bleaching the reef framework and its living tissue is overgrown with macro alga thereby preventing the colonization of coral larvae from attaching to the substrate. I also want to make clear that even if there are no sources of pollution and temperature stress the reefs (IF CONTINUED TO BE DOSED WITH CN) will not remain healthy as this will inhibit repopulation of alga into host tissue. Now, I hope this debate does not force me to fly all around the Pacific again to visit damaged reefs, collect statistics, and samples of reefs damaged by collectors using CN and dynamite?? The reason I started this experiment was due to a defender of the importation of corals and fishes! Julian Sprungs comments on the coral list server claiming that there was no evidence that HCN kills corals and was actually defending his position claiming I had no evidence. This sparked a fury of e-mails from Journalists wanting to know if CN kills corals and that the trade business was justified in what they were doing (turning a blind eye). His comments, at the time forced me to obtain evidence and alliance to prove this person wrong as his comments are listened to by the Aquarium trade and hobby peoples. I regret killing the corals for that experiment due to this persons comments, however, it was conducted to show that the smallest doses of CN kill. I find it weird that the MAC keeps attacking and nit picking at this issue? I feel the MAC wants the CONTINUED revolving door going of collected fish and corals from natural reef in the tropics. I suggested that there be a temporary ban on the importation of WILD collected corals and fishes from the Pacific and allow only imports from farming and cyanide tested fishes. Did they back this ??? No way as this would hurt their interests. I suggest you take some of the MAC profits, pay for my ticket and I will take you to barren waste-lands of reefs that were exposed to CN. I will take you to villages and have peoples show you the never-again re-populated reefs due to decades of CN exposure. Unless the MAC wants to support a project dumping CN on a mile of reef for 2 years to see if re-population of symbiotic alga is harbored in dead tissue on barren limestone exposed corals....."are these "hospitable homes for fishes" ? Will this keep the MAC from having anything arguementitive to say about the use of HCN?


KIRDA WROTE:Yup, yup, yup. Nearly as error-filled as some of the press releases I've seen out of one of our favorite NGO's... Not meant to tweak so much as to show how press release writers are often non-scientists and don't get things right.
At least here I knew what she meant. And while factually inaccurate, the statements as a whole are not wrong. These are nitpicks in the grand scheme.


JAMES CERVINO WRITES: the journalist was factually accurate as this is what I said. The journalist has 2 masters degrees; one in Environmental science and the other in Politics (focused on chemical weapons use). The journalist is an award winning medical/science writer with a roller-dex of scientists willing to take their quotes due to her accuracy in reporting scientific data. Not too many science journalists have this option due to inaccurate data reported. The journalist also visited CN damaged reefs for 5 years in the Pacific and produced a Discovery Channel piece that aired internationally for ABC.


Lets stop the fighting and force the MAC to influence farm collected corals to be imported as well as MANDATORY CN testing facilities at every port. That is where their funds should be going.


Thanks, James Cervino

I must have been misunderstood or something.

James Cervino's response to my critiques suggests that I am supportive of the use of cyanide or that I doubt that cyanide is harmful. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There were a few statements in the press release that struck me as odd, knowing what I know.

The release states that zooxanthellae provide corals with their brilliant colors. It's the coral pigments, not the zooxanthellae that provides the brilliant colors.

The release cites the mortality statistics from Rubec, which ultimately came from Lallo. The average cumulative mortality seems wildly exaggerated. This is under discussion now in this forum.

This release also states that, "It can take decades for reefs to again become hospitable homes for fish and for zooxanthellae to repopulate corals...". My criticism wasn't concerning the likely fact that it takes decades for reefs to recover after having been devastated by cyanide use. My concern was that the statement makes it seem as if corals can remain alive for decades in the wild without zooxanthellae. I didn't think that a coral could remain alive on a reef without zooxanthellae given the likely difficulty of defending itself against other coral aggressors or overgrowth by algae.

I suspect that James Cervino knows these things but that the wording in the press release is somewhat ambiguous. Also aquarist is spelled incorrectly as aquariast, but that is just a minor typo.

I'm confused about why James Cervino goes into a criticism of MAC, as if MAC doesn't believe that cyanide is harmful to reefs. I don't think there is any need to conduct field experiments on this issue as Cervino has suggested.

 

[PeterIMA]

John, The mortality rates the press release referred (50% on the reef and cumulatively >80% throughout the chain from reef to retailer) were from my papers (Rubec 1986, 1987, Rubec and Sundararajan 1991) not from the study pertaining to mortality in the US at the retail level done by Frank Lallo (still unpublished) but referred to in my Cyanide-Free Net-Caught paper (Rubec et al. 2001).

Peter Rubec

 

[Kalkbreath]

Peter, do you not understand ,that without fish included in the test ..........there is nothing but speculation as to the amount of cyanide exposer corals experience when cyanide is used to collect fish {by this hobby} If the fish dont survive the test , then the test level of cyanide is too high......... When tests conclude fish can survive and corals die Then you will have something?{You can fool the public but you cant fool the fish } Second , how bout posting some of those cyanide bleached reefs you have seen? {Also please only include examples from this decade}

 

[wade1]

Peter,
Could you post a list of references you have on the subject? I only have 6 total papers dealing with cyanide directly and am always searching for anything else toxicologically related to reefs. Email or here is fine.

BTW, know of any post-doc opportunities available in the field?

Wade

 

[John_Brandt]

John, The mortality rates the press release referred (50% on the reef and cumulatively >80% throughout the chain from reef to retailer) were from my papers (Rubec 1986, 1987, Rubec and Sundararajan 1991) not from the study pertaining to mortality in the US at the retail level done by Frank Lallo (still unpublished) but referred to in my Cyanide-Free Net-Caught paper (Rubec et al. 2001).

Peter Rubec

Peter,

Thank you for clarifying this. But it is of little practical difference however because Lallo's "survey" gives the same statistics.

The 50% kill at the moment of exposure is your statistic from 1986(?) that gets used throughout your reports. I have yet to see how you established this figure. What was your survey like?

The 30% kill in the collector's hands is also your statistic from 1986(?).

The 30% kill in the middleman's hands is also your statistic from 1986(?)

The 30% kill at the exporter is also your statistic from 1986(?). You also mentioned, "Ferdinand Cruz in email to me stated that the mortality in exporter's tanks was 80%."

The 30% kill at the importer is also your statistic from 1986(?).

Now at the retail level you use the figure 30% which is your statistic from 1986(?). Lallo found that it was 30% on the West Coast (which exactly agrees with your statistic from 11 years prior), 35% in the Midwest, and 60% on the East Coast.

So in summary it makes little practical difference to a reader of Cervino's press release that the data originally comes from Rubec or Rubec-Lallo. Because Rubec's 1986(?) statistics suggest 50% mortality at the reef and >80% cumulative mortality, while Rubec-Lallo suggests 50% mortality at the reef and >80% cumulative mortality as well. More specifically, Rubec-Lallo suggests >80% cumulative mortality when using examples of West Coast and Midwest retailers, and exactly 90% cumulative mortality when using examples of East Coast retailers.

Since >80% = 90%; when Cervino sends out the unreferenced press release is it of no practical difference to the reader if the source of the statistics is Rubec 1986(?) or Rubec-Lallo 2001.

 

[John_Brandt]

Back to Cervino's press release again:

"Approximately 50 percent of cyanide-exposed aquarium fish die while still on the reef, research has shown. More than 80 percent of the remainder die before they're sold to retailers in North America and Europe, homes of the biggest hobby aquarium industries."

Now we see Europe mentioned in the statistic. Peter, did your 1986(?) report lump Europe into this >80% cumulative mortality statistic? And if so, why is the whole discussion in this forum centering on the North American chain of custody?

 

[kylen]

John,

That is what is relevant to us and what we can/should comment on. I can't speak for the European chain, just my small portion of Canada.

 

[PeterIMA]

John, You seem to be confusing "mortalities through the chain" which when added give the cumulative mortality through the chain. Hence, my paper published in the Proceedings of the 3rd Asian Fisheries Forum in 1986 discussed reported mortality at different parts of the chain, collector, exporter, importer, wholesaler, retailer. I presented in this paper mortality values previously published in the aquarium literature. These values varied widely at each step of the chain. Based on these values and other values provided to me by persons in the trade and hobby, I came up with an average value of 30% at each step of the chain. Then, I did computations that estimated the cumulative mortality through the chain from collector to retailer. This estimate was >80% (excluding the morality on the reef). Other information obtained from collectors in the Philippines indicated there was on average (again it varies due to environmental conditions etc) 50% mortality on the reef when the collectors were using cyanide (which at the time most Philippine collectors used cyanide). The cumulative mortality on the reef and through the chain was estimated to be greater than 90% (Rubec and Soundararajan 1991). The latter was in a paper that I presented at a toxicology conference held in Vancouver in 1990.

I called these "rough averages" in my earlier postings because they were not based on a formal survey, with a lot of raw data by which I could derive averages. Mike Kirda's postings at least understood this.

In your recent posting you attack the above study and some of my other postings on Reefs.org because I mentioned that if you also include 30% mortality at the middleman's level the cumulative mortality could be higher. You also attacked me for mentioning Europe. Well, the study was not confined to North America. The chain in question could span from the Philippines to Europe rather than from the Philippines (or Indonesia) to North America. The main point I am trying to make people aware of is that what you see at the retail level is the tip of the iceberg for the mortality that occurs. Only the fish that survive are passed to the next step of the chain. The detrimental conditions (cyanide capture, stress, ammonia, starvation) during capture, holding, and transport exist in the chain of custudy whether it starts in the Philippines or Indonesia, and whether it ends in North America or in Europe. I do have data from Europeans to indicate that high mortality occurs there as well.

With regard to the study by Frank Lallo, this is much more quantitative being based on raw data from North American retailers (shipment by shipment). I conservatively estimate that Frank has over 35,000 observations. Frank has mentioned that he also has some data from importers (but that was not the focus of his study). Let's not confuse my earliar qualitative estimates with his quantitative estimates of mortality at the retail level for three regions within the U.S.A.

I find it of interest that some retailers now are publicly admitting that they have high mortality. This is important. One can't solve a problem until one admits one has a problem. I am surprised to learn that the retailers fear retribution from their suppliers. Shouldn't the consumers (whether they be the hobbyist or the retailer) be the ones pushing for better quality from their suppliers?

Peter Rubec