If any of you ever have the chance, the owner of Absolutely Fish in NJ does a great presentation on this and it's worth seeing. I'll try and paraphrase but it's been awhile. He starts off with:
"I think all of us care about what happens in the ocean and to the reefs of the world but let's not kid ourselves. We're not doing anything good, right? I mean, there's nothing good about our hobby and that's ok. We hope that but what we're doing we're learning about a mostly unknown environment, which we are. We hope that we're educating others about what we love, which again we are. We should be honest with ourselves, when we start complaining of the devastation of some of the world's reefs, that it is due to us. Our actions are speeding up the process of making sure these animals cease to exist and we should be honest with ourselves about that."
It's not a bash fest he's just trying to point out that what we are doing is not good nor responsible but we
can make as little an impact as possible. He tries to remind everyone that it's a supply and demand business and what's available is what sells. Stop buying it and it'll stop being pulled from the ocean.
He does a bit on tangs:
"Every hobbyist owns at least one tang, most more. For example we sell tons of tangs. Where do they go? Right? Everyone owns a tang and tangs all get to be the size of dinner plates. So where are all these tangs going? They end up in the toilet."
He does a piece on cyanide and dynamite and the practices that have utterly destroyed the reefs in the Philippians. He shows pictures of what the reefs look like now compared to what they used to look like. (Think Fish Town)
I still shop there by the way
