Analysis of Destructive Fishing Practice in the Indo-Pacific

[Kalkbreath]

Me? , back in Nevada.......................I would most likely blow all my cash at the Bunny Ranch and have to walk back to Georgia .........again.
Any how until someone disproves the silly notion that 90% of collected MO fish die during transport.......Proving that only 5 fish per square mile per month are collected for the trade in PI or that less then one percent of the yellow tangs in Hawaii are removed each year .......is fruitless because the anti crowd will still make up preposterous DOA DAA stats to pad their mathematicaly impossible positions.

 

[spawner]

I understand, too afraid, nothing wrong with that, scaredy kalk. :roll:

 

[PeterIMA]

Kalk, Come to MO06 and debate the real issues. I can even put you on the panel. But, you need to make sure your facts are correct.

Peter Rubec

 

[StevenPro]

At the rate of 20k per day that would equal about 730,000,000 per year if they collected every day. All from one little island. Seems a bit high to me, but I have no way of knowing.
Mitch

I believe you made a mistake with your calculations. 20,000 fish per day times 365 days per year is only 7,300,000 fish per year. I don't know if that is anymore realistic or not, though.

 

[dizzy]

What's a couple of zeros here or there matter. The worse the marine ornamental industry looks the better.

 

[Anonymous]

Me? , back in Nevada.......................I would most likely blow all my cash at the Bunny Ranch and have to walk back to Georgia .........again.
Any how until someone disproves the silly notion that 90% of collected MO fish die during transport.......Proving that only 5 fish per square mile per month are collected for the trade in PI or that less then one percent of the yellow tangs in Hawaii are removed each year .......is fruitless because the anti crowd will still make up preposterous DOA DAA stats to pad their mathematicaly impossible positions.

hah when i went to the bunny ranch i came back w/extra cash


they just all had such a great time, they gave me a full refund + a bonus


:lol:

 

[clarionreef]

"YOUR FACTS MUST BE CORRECT TO SERVE ON A PANEL?"

1. First...if they are considered facts...are they therefore not correct by definition?

and ...
2. Panel members often speak w/ incorrect facts. In fact, there were some whoppers at the last M.O.
Steve

 

[clarionreef]

So instead of 730,000,000 fish its only 7,300,000 fish per year?
Steven,
You need to keep taking away zeros.
Steve

 

[Kalkbreath]

For some reason I get the feeling that I would be welcomed kinda like
Ann Coulter was at CU this week. "You Suck" Seems to be the reaction I get when I make others feel silly about their sophmoric positions.

 

[clarionreef]

Kalk,
You should come to Vegas.
You'll see outside people obsessed with the trades gross and dedicated to getting a piece of it.
They dislike the trade and dislike fisherfolk even more....but love and lust after the money it generates.
Seriously, they are all over the place while theres hardly an actual dealer ....w/ actual rent and payroll in sight.
Steve

 

[PeterIMA]

Kalk, Actually, there is at least one panel moderator that would like to see you present. One potential panel member from ReefCheck referred to some persons in the trade as "detritus". The theme of the panel is "Actions That Need Be Taken To Attain Sustainability of the Marine Aquarium Fish Trade". Many of your comments on Reefs.org have addressed these issues. They need to be discussed at MO06.

Peter Rubec

 

[Anonymous]

Detritus, now thats golden :lol:

 

[PeterIMA]

One concern Kalk has raised it that he believes that cyanide fishing is more prevalent (and presumably widespread) in the live food fish trade than in the aquarium fish trade? He asserted that the aquarium fish trade has taken most of the blame, and pointed to other fisheries with cyanide fishing.


Why is it that the live food fish trade has been defined as an "overfishing issue" throuthout SE Asia? Who decided that food fishes in the Philippines are caught with cyanide, but that cyanide fishing for food fishes does not occur elsewhere? Why has no cyanide testing been done in countries other than the Philippines? How will cerification of the live food fish trade by the MAC stop cyanide fishing?

Peter Rubec

 

[spawner]

Peter, live food fish are caught with cyanide, dead food fish are caught with explosives

This is the point that I agree most with Kalk, the live food fish trade is much larger, much larger impact,and we get most of the blame because people can see and hold ornamentals. Food fish to us are cleaned, nicely prepared, not swimming in a tank. It lacks the touchy feely thing.

Doesn't really matter to me the scale, but Kalk seems to beat the scale issue death. Kinda like well we only pump out a bit of mercury in to the air, so it's ok, instead of we need to find a way to prevent it from happening in the first place no matter how small of a foot print it has.

 

[clarionreef]

MAC does not seek to stop it....but sell absolution via a paper fix.

Some of the most guilty have sought certification as a 'get out of jail free card' and then crowed about how easy it was and how cheap to buy eco-respectability.
MAC has done a terrible thing by covering for this inequity while doing virtually nothing in real terms to solve it.
They are kept on life support not thru deeds and achievements but thru a political funding clique that perpetuates its own, covers for its own and leaves the trade and the reefs with little "reform" at all.
Eco- White-washing is a rising industry and will get bigger.
Not because they are so smart but because the granting agencies are so dim...so reluctant to field audit and so easily swayed by routine eco-speak mouthed by cohorts....and like minded, professional semi environmentalists.
The trades greatest crime as I see it now is in the use of these new whitewashing services.
Steve

 

[mkirda]

]This is the point that I agree most with Kalk, the live food fish trade is much larger, much larger impact, and we get most of the blame because people can see and hold ornamentals.

There are reef scientists who will contest the "larger impact" statement here.

Most of the reef-dwelling cyanide targets hide within coral branches. In order to knock them out, or force them out, cyanide fishermen must squirt the branches of the coral head. This mostly ends in the death of a portion of the coral, wherever the plume touchs the tissue in sufficient concentration.

For all grouper I have seen large enough to be gotten for the live food trade, they are physically too large to fit within the branches of your average Acropora colony. They tend to hide within the nooks and crannies of the reef structure itself. When you hit the hole with a squirt of cyanide, it is pretty safe to presume that you would not hit too much live coral within the hole. When the cyanide does exit, the plume can be dispersed enough to have little to no effect upon the surrounding corals.

The point is that the live grouper trade probably doesn't result in as much coral destruction as you would think. I'd like to believe that our hobby doesn't do as much damage as the LRFF trade does, given that the trade is probably 10x larger. But given that MO cyanide fishermen hit coral heads again and again and again, until there is nothing but algae-covered dead skeletons that do not allow recruitment of coral spat, the truth might not be very comfortable.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[Kalkbreath]

First off its small colorful groupers and Wrasses that dive into the coral at first site of divers and that Hong Kong fishermen are after.......not big grouper. Large grouper can be caught deep off shore with traditional long lines.

Secondly, Big grouper taste like crap , the market wants colorful single serving sized fish. Fish that look good in the live fish display tanks in the front of the restaurant.

Thirdly if anyone really wanted to know the truth, tests would have been done twenty years ago to establish for the record at what threshold tiny aquarium fish have for cyanide and what poison levels are needed to stun food size groupers

Fourthly, To think that only live seafood is targeted with cyanide is silly. Your average Filipino can afford to buy a hundred squirts of cyanide then a singlestick of TNT. They fish with what they can get a hold of and they eat what ever they catch. How many of the average Philippines even have access to a boat? Do we really think that to feed his family the father swims out off shore with a lit stick of dynamite between his teeth ........throws the stick ........puts his hand over his ears and braces himself or the blast? I think if that really happened very often, the birth rate in Pi would have dwindled years ago. :wink: Its the local island fishermen quietly squirt fishing off shore to feed their families which have destroyed the most reef habitat in PI. There are about ten million head of household fathers in PI. Most struggle to feed their families anything on a daily basis. Almost half are unemployed most of the year.
What would you do ?

Lastly, the reeformers over look the larger live food fish industry on purpose........then they over look the even larger local self use dead food industry out of shear incompetency!

 

[mkirda]

First off its small colorful groupers and Wrasses that dive into the coral at first site of divers and that Hong Kong fishermen are after.......not big grouper. Large grouper can be caught deep off shore with traditional long lines.

Kalk, why oh why can't you ever stay on focus?

If you only went diving in one of the areas we were talking about and saw the behavior of the fish in question with your own eyes, you'd see that reality does not remotely resemble the claptrap you peddle as the truth. They don't hide inside coral heads. The laws of physics sort of prevent that, you know- Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time and all...

You are deliberately obfuscating my original point - I focused on strictly the Live Reef Food Fish trade.

Obfuscation #1: Throwing BS like traditional long lines. Ever seen a long liner on the reef? They would avoid the reef because the reef would completely destroy their gear. Even if they could catch small colorful grouper, they wouldn't be live when hauled in, nor would they be in saleable condition for the live reef food fish trade due to the rather severe damage to their mouths...

Obfuscation #2: In the Philippines, much of the grouper are caught by fishermen in small bancas with little more than hook and line. It also ends up in the local wet market, or on their family's dinner plate, not in the live reef food fish trade.

Obfuscation #3: Even the mention of dynamite. Blast fishing produces dead fish. Dead fish don't swim very well in tanks in Hong Kong.

I wouldn't mind having an intelligent discussion on the LRFF trade, its use of cyanide in the capture of fish, and the relatively benign effects on the reef. Then to compare and contrast the difference in the way cyanide is used in the hobby trade.

However, you make it impossible, Kalk, to do any of this when you throw in crap about a Filipino fisherman blowing his nuts off with dynamite, or blaming the scientists for not establishing the precise levels needs to capture fish using cyanide 20 years back, etc., ad nauseum. These are so far off-topic we might as well be talking about exploration of Saturn's moons.

Peter, you really wish Kalk to attend Marine Ornamentals?
It would be interesting to see, that's for sure.

If I were in the industry, I'd be paying him to stay far, far away.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[PeterIMA]

MIke, I think you should participate on the panel. Kalk is welcome too. Let's get at the truth (whatever it really is).

Peter

 

[dizzy]

So just how is this cyanide fishing for grouper conducted? Do they dive down and find a grouper hiding in a hole, and then dive back down with squirt bottle in hand? Or do they toss pellets overboard and see what floats up? Is this data coming from interviews with actual cyanide fishers or is it speculation?