What would happen....

[Kalkbreath]

There are plenty of alternatives to the international trade in tropical fish...
[ assuming it is not truly reformed out on the reefs...instead of in press releases and paperwork ].
The divers...almost all of them , will simply continue to do what they do best...kill fish...turtles...lobster, etc.
Just because we are largely ignorant of the food fish trade doesn't mean its not the automatic alternative to tropicals. And just because our "Discovery channel/finding Nemo , Western , anthropomorphic sensitivites" may be appeased somewhat...by stopping the trade...we will only increase the ranks of full time and newly dedicated fish killing warriors. What it would accomplish in terms of lessening our culpability in tropical fish commerce is negated by the increase in food fish plunder.
The trade in tropicals is the only reason Western consumers agree even looking at the coral reef/fishery problems in S.E.Asia. It is what defined them and 'involved' us. It gave us the right to comment...to speak and speak out. Our money and investment is involved and if we are responsible business people we will insist that it be done right.
Do you thing many fisheries in the Philippines lose sleep over the impacts they cause? The military dynamite cartel? The grouper trade? The sheer tonnage of reef fish food industry that knows no bounds? Do you think there is a hint of professional assessment in much beyond the aquarium trade?
It is exactly our involvement that brings [and hilites] so much of this. Damn Foreigners! LOOK at what they cause!
Its a fair question...and if we turn it back to the local fisheries? Worse and getting still worse. The foreign conscience embarrasses and hilights many things that they wish were not exposed.
Eliminate the involvement in Philippine fisheries and only things Philippine will be tolerated. BFAR will rule as before...unembarrassed by the worlds attention on their "fishery management"situation.
Steve

..............Glad to have you aboard {Steve}................................{"Dont worry, I will stay on my side of the boat"}.But at least were on the same boat.......

 

[clarionreef]

Kalk,
Since the permits were 'delayed' in Mexico for the village co-op my divers work with...they have killed an amazing tonnage of sealife.
The entire catch total they amassed during their enforced lay-off from 'precious tropicals' was recorded in the fish buyers reciept book.
Tons...literally tons of slower growing groupers, parrotfish, snappers, yellowtail, triggerfish, creole anthias,grunts, lookdowns, pompanos etc. Juxtaposed to the invoices they would have created collecting tropical fish all this time we would see that 1/100 th of the biomass was collected at 4 X the value to them.
The fishery wisdom that wanted to slow down this 'strange new enterprise' [ tropicals] insured the destruction of so much more in its place.
In Mexico, tropical fish, collected properly are a far wiser fishery for those lucky enough to be involved than food fisheries. It has become a hot political issue there as village people angrily denounce what the government had done at the behest of some biologists there that wanted to stop trops...for esoteric and imagined reasons.
Years of resource assessments in the area deemed tropicals very sustainable. New people came into power and reversed the permits based on the research.
Now...the earlier research is being sustained once again and fish will be flowing.
But...Kalk. there was never a question of destroying coral habitat in the Mexican equation with cyanide. Thats why it remained a sustainable, intelligent alternative to the unregulated food fish industry.
If cyanide were involved...the Mexican authorites would have the fisherman AND suppliers of the poison in jail quickly.
Permits would be yanked and the trade probably shut down.

If the fishery were clean in the Philippines and Indonesia, it would be a lot easier to defend. It is not clean and so the hope is that it will be reformed and not just glossed over with a P.R. fix.
Steve

 

[mkirda]

As to the question of who voiced a demand of 100%.....Several people on this post has stated that 100% is what they expect...{ PETER}

Um... How do I put this?

Peter does not equal "several", Kalkbreath.

I'm not aware anyone else who has made that demand.

....This 100%demand was even if there are other fishermen fishing next to certified collectors with seafood fishermen collecting with cyanide for food fish ........................My opinion again, is that MAC cant test because a 3% cyanide finding would ruin the party................["If a collector is caught with cyanide'] {like in his hand} he should be arrested {and forced to eat the evidence like a pot dealer does when he sees the cops coming! :lol: } Not really.........If ["collector is caught with cyanide outside collection area"]Same thing arrest............And lastly MAc should handle the issues by establishing certified collection in another counrty.....first.......then attempt reeform in PI .....because they will never be able to boast 100 % clean fish in PI ......but they could in ten other countries.......By establishing test proven success in ......say Tonga, ["TONGA"] "there I knew you could"........then they could explain like I am doing , that there is quite a lot of second hand cyanide in PI so while testing might not show 100% perfect test results......a three percent dirty finding is still quite a remarkable success........ :wink:

So the answers are "Arrest", "Arrest", and "forget about the Philippines, fix the areas without a cyanide problem first"...

Did I get that right?

Kalk,

One further question:
Of all the ways of catching food fish, what approximate percentage of fishermen do you think use cyanide to catch food fish? Is this an opinion, or is it informed in some way?

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[Kalkbreath]

By allowing the " benefit of the doubt" fish that showed very low traces of cyanide were considered as negative. I consider this "is/ was" one of the main problems the CDT has/had. If we are expecting to see that this trade is 100% clean, all tests have to show 0 concentrations of cyanide. The benefit of the doubt is the factor allowing exporters to play the game. No cyanide equals Zero readings. Peter is that possible?

Mkirta......Here is one more demanding 100% and there might be more in this topic .........But because so few people even had the guts to chime in at all ......I think illustrates the fact that very few people are going to go on the record stating that five percent is ok.....and would rather keep quite altogether.....

 

[mkirda]

Mkirta......Here is one more demanding 100% and there might be more in this topic .........But because so few people even had the guts to chime in at all ......I think illustrates the fact that very few people are going to go on the record stating that five percent is ok.....and would rather keep quite altogether.....

Kalkbread,

Jaime said "IF". I didn't read this as a "demand", but as a supposition.

And I'm one of those who would rather keep "quite altogether"... :wink:

I'm more likely to ascribe the relative lack of feedback to:
1) Lack of feedback on the part of MAC, and
2) The time required to really think this one through.

If the numbers got down to 5% positive, I'm one who would be happy.
It would not, however, stop me from pressing for more improvements.
Sorta like murder rates, IMO. If the rate is down to 1/10th of 1 percent, I'm happy, but none is better...

I'm still curious about the other question though.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[Kalkbreath]

I think your still missing the point to the question........"If it is true that on average five percent of all reefs fish in PI are tainted with cyanide from the fish food industry...Would you be comfortable not beng able to improve that percentage ?

 

[Kalkbreath]

.And if being caught with cyanide fish in your possession means that in the eyes of the reeformers, that your guilty .....then does that mean that if a grouper eats some second hand exposed fish .....that nothing could convince the reeformers that the grouper was not "collecting with cyanide" because inside its stomach is all the evidence one needs? If a certain percentage of fish came up testing for cyanide no matter who was collecting..would you be comfortable with never being able to boast a 100 percent clean test result? Never being able to prove one way or another that any of our collectors are still juice collecting or not? As of testing the last time around............it was twenty percent.......and I guess that most people thought 20 percent is too high..................lets say I use the example of thirty years ago ,testing found 85% of hobby fish from PI tested for cyanide...........twenty years ago it shrunk to 50% .....then again to 30 % ten years ago.........with the last testing results finding 20%.....How do we not know that only ten percent of collected fish today are tainted? How do we know how many collectors are still juicing it up? And what percentage of those still using cyanide are in experienced first time prospectors?............Do we blame all automobile drivers for the fact that 20% of new teen drivers will crash their first year?

 

[Kalkbreath]

:wink:And lastly.......I came up with the PERFECT analogy ....... "If a person has a fifty dollar bill in his possession" .......is that proof that you are guilty of cocaine trafficking .....being that almost every single fifty dollar bill in America has traces of cocaine on it?

 

[PeterIMA]

Kalk, None of the percentages you posted represent the trend found for cyanide presence in food fishes published in my paper. Your questions lack clarity. They appear to be designed to confuse and raise false fears in the trade.

Peter Rubec

 

[mkirda]

Kalk, None of the percentages you posted represent the trend found for cyanide presence in food fishes published in my paper. Your questions lack clarity. They appear to be designed to confuse and raise false fears in the trade.

Peter Rubec

Sunk that nail in one stroke.

 

[mkirda]

:wink:And lastly.......I came up with the PERFECT analogy ....... "If a person has a fifty dollar bill in his possession" .......is that proof that you are guilty of cocaine trafficking .....being that almost every single fifty dollar bill in America has traces of cocaine on it?

Kalk,

This in *not* a perfect analogy.

First of all, testing currency is absolutely useless in this situation: There is no apparent connection between possession of currency and drug trafficking. When testing a fish for presence of cyanide, there *is* an apparent connection between cyanide exposure and the fisherman and/or trader/seller.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[mkirda]

I think your still missing the point to the question........"If it is true that on average five percent of all reefs fish in PI are tainted with cyanide from the fish food industry...Would you be comfortable not beng able to improve that percentage ?

No, absolutely not.

I used the murder analogy before, and will use it again.
The taking of any one life by murder is one murder too many.
No matter how low the rate is, there is *ALWAYS* room for improvement.

In the same way, you are missing the point that cyanide fishing is still ILLEGAL and punishable by five years in prison in the Philippines. Any cyanide fishing to too much, IMO. It may be impossible to eliminate it entirely, just like murder here in the US, but that does not mean that we should give up trying to eliminate it altogether.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[mkirda]

.And if being caught with cyanide fish in your possession means that in the eyes of the reeformers, that your guilty .....then does that mean that if a grouper eats some second hand exposed fish .....that nothing could convince the reeformers that the grouper was not "collecting with cyanide" because inside its stomach is all the evidence one needs?

Who is this group 'reeformers"?
Why don't you ask them directly?
I have no idea who this group is, nor have any idea what they stand for, nor any interest in being their spokesperson.

Also, how does a grouper collect with cyanide? I've never seen a grouper with big enough fins to hold a squirt bottle, nor can I figure out where they would get ahold of cyanide tablets. Wouldn't fish collectors be the only ones with access to this sort of stuff? :wink:

If a certain percentage of fish came up testing for cyanide no matter who was collecting..would you be comfortable with never being able to boast a 100 percent clean test result? Never being able to prove one way or another that any of our collectors are still juice collecting or not?

Show me that this has ever happened.

Right now, it appears that you are grasping at any last chance to make your case. Is this all you have left? Are we left with only these hypothetical and extreme examples that have never been shown to have any basis in reality? Hey, I'm all for testing it out, this secondhand cyanide idea, just to see how little merit it actually has. I've already poked holes in your numbers, and I'm perfectly willing to do so again in perfectly logical and perfectly understandable fashion.

As of testing the last time around............it was twenty percent.......and I guess that most people thought 20 percent is too high..................lets say I use the example of thirty years ago ,testing found 85% of hobby fish from PI tested for cyanide...........twenty years ago it shrunk to 50% .....then again to 30 % ten years ago.........with the last testing results finding 20%.....How do we not know that only ten percent of collected fish today are tainted? How do we know how many collectors are still juicing it up? And what percentage of those still using cyanide are in experienced first time prospectors?

Again, these numbers have no basis in reality as the rest of the world knows it, Kalk. If you cite the numbers coming out of the CDT lab, the situation is vastly, vastly different. Peter has pointed them out to you repeatedly, in numerous posts. Why is it that you continue to spew fantasy numbers rather than the correct ones, even after being repeatedly corrected? Your agenda is showing.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[PeterIMA]

Mike, I agree with you. Kalk is grasping at straws.

Peter

 

[Kalkbreath]

I think your still missing the point to the question........"If it is true that on average five percent of all reefs fish in PI are tainted with cyanide from the fish food industry...Would you be comfortable not beng able to improve that percentage ?

No, absolutely not.

I used the murder analogy before, and will use it again.
The taking of any one life by murder is one murder too many.
No matter how low the rate is, there is *ALWAYS* room for improvement.

In the same way, you are missing the point that cyanide fishing is still ILLEGAL and punishable by five years in prison in the Philippines. Any cyanide fishing to too much, IMO. It may be impossible to eliminate it entirely, just like murder here in the US, but that does not mean that we should give up trying to eliminate it altogether.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

Your still not following.....so I will simplify it........What if YOU MKirta}. walked out to the beach in PI...{then you waded knee deep in the water .......collected some fish with a net.......You walk back onto the beach .....and hand the fish to Peter......Peter then tests the fish and your fish test for cyanide ......tell me how you would change your collection method ?

 

[Kalkbreath]

:wink:And lastly.......I came up with the PERFECT analogy ....... "If a person has a fifty dollar bill in his possession" .......is that proof that you are guilty of cocaine trafficking .....being that almost every single fifty dollar bill in America has traces of cocaine on it?

Kalk,

This in *not* a perfect analogy.

First of all, testing currency is absolutely useless in this situation: There is no apparent connection between possession of currency and drug trafficking. When testing a fish for presence of cyanide, there *is* an apparent connection between cyanide exposure and the fisherman and/or trader/seller.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

What if the current owner of the 50 dollar bill was not the one who tainted it with cocaine? What if the current owner of the blue tang was not the person that tainted it?

 

[mkirda]

Your still not following.....so I will simplify it........What if YOU MKirta}. walked out to the beach in PI...{then you waded knee deep in the water .......collected some fish with a net.......You walk back onto the beach .....and hand the fish to Peter......Peter then tests the fish and your fish test for cyanide ......tell me how you would change your collection method ?

Kalkbread,

I absolutely *AM* following you, and have conceded before that there is an exceedingly small chance of this happening.

At the same time, you go into a store and purchase a CD, there is a small chance that you are purchasing pirated goods too. And the point is?

If I were to go out and collect a hundred fish in this manner, how many do you think would test positive, Kalkbread? And what exactly would this prove to you? You are the one who advocated that for every fish caught that tests positive, the fisherman should go to jail. Those are not my words, but yours. Why are you now apparently arguing with yourself?

As far as changing my collection method in this hypothetical situation, obviously it would not be the collection method that is at fault, therefore there is no way to change it. You have two avenues of attacking the result in a court of law, one being that the test is faulty, the other that the fish was exposed through other means. If you can show that cyanide fishing occurs in your barangay, you'd likely get off. However, it also would give a mandate to the local police to start cracking down on the local cyaniders.

I have never argued that the CDT is a panacea, nor that it is a perfect tool. However, as I have shown in the past, the chances of a fisherman capturing a fish previously exposed to cyanide, and having it pass the test are exceedingly small. Do you want me to repost this?

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[mkirda]

What if the current owner of the 50 dollar bill was not the one who tainted it with cocaine?

What if this is a really crappy analogy?

What if the current owner of the blue tang was not the person that tainted it?

What if the current owner of kiddie porn isn't the one who took the picture?

Jeez, Kalk...
Can't you come up with any better arguments than this?
I'm getting bored here.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[blue hula3]

They are handling it the only way they can ........not test. ............................It would be suicide.......Not that their collectors are cheating......but that they know there is no way 100% of the fish are clean.....and the public and reeformists are not going to stand for anything short of perfection...{like Peter} Reeform needs to establish itself ......first in a country that the rewards of net fishing can be seen....{like Tonga}........That way there is no question as to industry "reeformability" and the respect that would be gained with this proven accomplishment

My goodness ... I finally understand the point of this thread.

MAC needs a reasonable exit strategy from their existing program in the Phils. They need to be able to justify their abandonment of areas like Batasan not as "too hard" or "we just havn't got it right" but either as a constructive move in the right direction that contributes to the over all program or as someone else's fault (e.g. residual cyanide associated with live reeffish mucks us up) ... or a combo of both ... or some other such nonsense. Indeed, success is more likely in areas such as the South Pacific and southern Phils where the reefs are in relatively good nick ...

Has Kalk come up with the justification for MAC - go someplace where your program won't get underminded by nagging problems wtih CDT ?

 

[Kalkbreath]

Now that you finally got my drift...blue hula ........How can you be so certain.?.......Explain to me why .....when you go diving and do not sea any fish around .....what do you think happened to the fish? Where did all the non hobby target fish go.......? You know,the fish that this hobby does not collect? Keep in mind that Damsels ,clownfish and chromis make up 75% of our imports from PI .......the remaining 2.5 million triggers ,angels, tangs and such .......only amount to ten fish per square kilometer per year.......{.25,000 square kilometers of reefs divided by 2.5 million fish ..}... Ten fish per year cannot deplete the fish stocks....{anywhere}..So .. what happened to the NEVER targeted fish like brown grunts or the other ugly fish that are not collected by us.......? They have been decimated by seafood cyanide fishing. If seafood fishermen can kill off every last brown grunt...{{thats why you dont sea them when you dive}...then they surely have also killed off many of our hobbies targeted ornamentals......They kill our fish by juicing them when they go after the food fish........is it so hard to imagine that some of these fish swim away stunned by alive? Why is it impossible to think a few might be inadvertently caught the next day by a net collector?