Take your pick, Biopiracy or tank acclimated livestock?

[clarionreef]

As a spearfiherman for many years I would like to add that the best time to nail a big parrotfish is when he's crunching merrily away on live coralheads.
Parrots have good white fillets and never go to waste. If they wouldn't become so engrossed in their incessant 'fragging' of live coral then they would be harder to hit.

Steve
PS. When speared...they poop a stream of...white sand....which later becomes 'live sand'.
"eat dead corals"????
Wayne, do you know where you are posting...and who your audience is?

 

[Anonymous]

Another Zinger from BC Thanks Wayne, now I can go sleep

 

[naesco]

Well Steve correct me if I am wrong but you have to correct Fenner too.
"
"A common misunderstanding with this group is what they eat. They rarely feed on actual live corals tissue, but stomach-contents analyses have shown they do derive most of their nourishment from scraping organisms, mainly algae, living in and amongst dead coral substrates."

 

[treeman]

How would the village own the coral in the first place?

The trend in Indonesia and the Philippines (and Fiji and Tonga, etc.) is that the LGU (Local Governmental Unit) (or tribe, in the case of Fiji/Tonga, etc.) is the one that OWNS the Reef, usually from the shoreline (or nearby) to some relatively arbitrary distance from the shoreline. Say like 100 meters offshore to 10km offshore. If the local village owns the reef, then they own the coral that lives on the reef.

The tribal systems in Fiji, etc. are often presided over by a village elder, who gets to decide who gets to go where and do what on the reef.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

But what if that coral was spread over many islands(villages) or countries? How would you be able to tell them apart with any accuracy, especially after it had morphed in different systems?

I suppose that all the villages that it appeared in could ban together and sell it together?

 

[dizzy]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/apr2002/6.htm

I just saved 3,000 words.

 

[clarionreef]

WAYNE,
I ONLY KNOW WHAT I'VE SEEN ...AND MARVELED AT A HUNDRED TIMES.
I never understood how crunching into the coral could be pleasant for parrotfish but theres no doubt that they do it a lot.
Perhaps there are parrots working different niches on different reefs in different locales...but the knowledge there is to have often runs ahead of the stuff that made it to print. Perhaps they crunch the coral to get what lies between or underneath...or in the coral surface.
In my experience, the worst observers are in fact marine biologists owing to the nature of the 'part time field trip' work schedules instead of day in and day out, season in and season out observations that commercial divers get.
The difficulty of the task to crunch into coral demands the focused intention and that is exactly why they are easy to spear at this time. Normally they are more skittish.
Steve

 

[PeterIMA]

Mitch, I would consider a coral "farmed" if it was fragged from a parent colony (preferably one that was previously produced from a frag) and grown for at least a year either on in the ocean or in an aquaculture facility. I do not consider attaching coral fragments to an artificial base for immediate sale (without growout) to be coral farming. The purpose of farming the corals (on lease sites like TURFs) is to eliminate the need for harvesting SPS corals from the wild. While the first generation coral fragments (frags) grown out probably would come from natural reefs; after that the first generation serves as the mother colony for the creation of subsequent coral frags.

Peter Rubec

 

[naesco]

Steve I don't doubt what you saw. The point I was trying to make is that coral polyps are not their main food and do not do the damage Kalk suggests.

I saw a recent National Film Board TV show and the parrotfish were one of the fish highlighted.
The show indicated that the parrotfish was performing a valuable task. The parrotfish were removing algae and their 'damage' to the living coral had a positive effect. I can't remember whether it stopped the growth of the algae near the base of the coral, allowed for propagation in some manner or cleaned the suface so the mother colony could expand. Maybe some one knows the answer.

 

[naesco]

PARROTFISH

Well they certainly don't eat polyps. They are herbivors. They eat algae.
They graze by scraping the algae on dead coral and around polyps.
If a grouping of polyps is becoming overcome with algae they will go in there and do their job.
Undoubtedly there are rogue parrotfish and there may even be a rogue species within the group of some 90 species that might like to nibble on a polyp or two.
All you need to know about there feeding is in a website devoted to their feeding habits.
http://www.clarku.edu/departments/biolo ... /index.cfm

Wayne

 

[clarionreef]

Rogue parrotfish ?????

Crunching and killing some coral in their feeding was the point. Not wether they ingest polyps or not.
Steve

 

[naesco]

Mariculture corals are grown from fragged large colonies. The idea is that adult colonies regrow quickly ... and the act of breaking away small fragments is not unlike what parrot fish remove naturally.
Julian Sprung estimated that one adult parrot fish eats 14 tons of coral a year. Thats a lot of frags .
My estimates are that 10 coral frags equal one pound ..so one parrot fish eats 200,000 + frags per year. A few parot fish eat more coral frags then CITES alows to be exported ......? There is something wrong with that. :wink:

Kalk, I don't think so.
Parrot fish eat dead coral not live coral so unlike the trade, they do not deprive the reef of its living organisms.

No it wasn't the point Steve. I was correcting the common misconception held by industry that parrotfish ate polyps as demostrated in the aforementiond post by Kalk and my subsequent reply.

 

[mkirda]

No it wasn't the point Steve. I was correcting the common misconception held by industry that parrotfish ate polyps as demostrated in the aforementiond post by Kalk and my subsequent reply.

Naesco,

They *DO* eat polyps. And anything else they crunch with those teeth.
It is probable that they derive most of their nutrition from algae, but realize that zooxanthellae *ARE* algae.
Am attaching a photo here to demonstrate what I highlighted earlier:
This was taken in Koromaha Atoll, part of the Tukang Besi group.
This is very typical of the damage that parrotfish do to corals, and how corals heal from the damage rather quickly...

 

[Kalkbreath]

Bump head parrot fish eat a lot of live coral ......... the diets of various parrot fish, like tangs ....... varies with each species. There are many movies like The Living Seas series which show huge bump head parrot fish chomping down healthy coral fingers ..........Julian Sprung was not talking about all species of parrot fish when he said each eats 14 tons of coral per year ........ only certain species like the bump heads .

 

[Kalkbreath]

Mitch, I would consider a coral "farmed" if it was fragged from a parent colony (preferably one that was previously produced from a frag) and grown for at least a year either on in the ocean or in an aquaculture facility. I do not consider attaching coral fragments to an artificial base for immediate sale (without growout) to be coral farming. The purpose of farming the corals (on lease sites like TURFs) is to eliminate the need for harvesting SPS corals from the wild. While the first generation coral fragments (frags) grown out probably would come from natural reefs; after that the first generation serves as the mother colony for the creation of subsequent coral frags.

Peter Rubec

" Farmed" should mean that the reef is farmed.
In agriculture we farm the land ............ not the green house. Take the health of the wild reefs out of process of successful farming, and what you will have left is more concern over the water quality in the vats then out on the reefs

 

[dizzy]

farm Listen: [ färm ]
n.


A tract of land cultivated for the purpose of agricultural production.

a. A tract of land devoted to the raising and breeding of domestic animals. b. An area of water devoted to the raising, breeding, or production of a specific aquatic animal: a trout farm; an oyster farm.

An area of land devoted to the storage of a commodity or the emplacement of a group of devices: a tank farm; an antenna farm.

Baseball A minor-league club affiliated with a major-league club for the training of recruits and the maintenance of temporarily unneeded players.

Obsolete a. The system of leasing out the rights of collecting and retaining taxes in a certain district. b. A district so leased.
v. farmed, farm·ing, farms
v. tr.


To cultivate or produce a crop on.

To pay a fixed sum in order to have the right to collect and retain profits from (a business, for example).

To turn over (a business, for example) to another in return for the payment of a fixed sum.
v. intr.

To engage in farming.

Phrasal Verb:
farm out
To send (work, for example) from a central point to be done elsewhere.
Baseball To assign (a player) to a minor-league team.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Middle English, lease, leased property, from Old French ferme, from Medieval Latin firma, fixed payment, from Latin firmre, to establish, from firmus, firm; see dher- in Indo-European roots.]

 

[naesco]

Mariculture corals are grown from fragged large colonies. The idea is that adult colonies regrow quickly ... and the act of breaking away small fragments is not unlike what parrot fish remove naturally.
Julian Sprung estimated that one adult parrot fish eats 14 tons of coral a year. Thats a lot of frags .
My estimates are that 10 coral frags equal one pound ..so one parrot fish eats 200,000 + frags per year. A few parot fish eat more coral frags then CITES alows to be exported ......? There is something wrong with that. :wink:

Kalk, I don't think so.
Parrot fish eat dead coral not live coral so unlike the trade, they do not deprive the reef of its living organisms.

This is your original post. It is not correct, Kalk.

 

[Kalkbreath]

Yes , its quite correct. A fifty pound bump head parrot fish eats live coral almost exclusively. Do you really think a fish this big can squeeze between coral branches like a tang and gently whisk away hair algea at the base of a colony using its its beak like a pair of tweezers? Has anyone even ever seen any Pacific species of parrot fish eating hair algae or Caulerpa on the reef ?
I have plenty of video of the coral munchers in action that I will upload this weekend for your enlightenment. Also keep in mind this 14 ton issue is from Julian Sprung , whom I doubt you have even heard of ...........Also Eric Borneman supports the notion in several of his books ....but I doubt you have any notion who he is either ....

 

[naesco]

Where do you mention bump parrotfish you just mention parrotfish?
I pointed out to you and others that
1. Parrotfish are algae eating fish not polyp eaters.
2. That there may be rogue parrotfish
3. That within the parrotfish there may be a species that eats polyps.

 

[naesco]

Where do you mention bumphead parrotfish you just mention parrotfish?
I pointed out to you and others that
1. Parrotfish are algae eating fish not polyp eaters.
2. That there may be rogue parrotfish
3. That within the parrotfish there may be a species that eats polyps.

 

[mkirda]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4333627.stm

This might help put some of what I was trying to explain into context.

Regards.
Mike Kirda