Everyone should read this

Do you know who harvests your livestock?

Please checkout these links.

http://www.aquariumcouncil.org/

http://macweb.inets.com/subpage.asp?page=51&section=21


Heres a link to their brochure
for hobbiests in Adobe PDF format

http://macweb.inets.com/docs/1/pdf/Hobbyist_Booklet.pdf

Im sure Matt has all this info somewhere but it doesnt hurt to remind everyone about it.

I will be asking my retailers if they are on their list af approved collecters.

Jay

 

Unfortunately the LFS usually has no clue who or where the livestock is collected. I am not saying none of them know, but by and large...

They usually get their product from a wholesaler. The wholesaler has to be ethical and use proper collectors.. :-/

Buying from a wholesaler works out better for the LFS because they suffer less mortalities than having a transhipped order. I don't understand all the nuances yet, but I have been working with a new LFS here, and the couple times I saw Anthony Calfo this year, I had asked him a few questions on the whole set up....kind of confusing...you can check Wetwebmedia.com and there is a whole section on being a retailer/wholesaler/jobber or cherrypicker ;D

good stuff tho! ;D We should care where our animals come from, to be sure!

 

Yep, I am going to be more aware of the status of the livestock I buy as well as how they are harvested.


Jay

 

I'll wait to here what Gresham chimes in with. As you may or may not know he has been very active in the wholesale business and has played an active role in changing collection habits in many of the countries that had questionable techniques.

Jason

 

I only found this thread cuz Matt hit me upside the head with it

Hmm, where to start about MAC. I've been watching MAC even before it was MAC. It has potential, but I feel, as do many others, that it needs some change. Right now, there aren't any MAC fish flowing really.

FWIW, the committed exporters list is a who's who in the "dark" side of the business

 

i cant wait untill the day where all fish and corals and inverts are aquacultured and there would be no need for mac (sorry for jobs lost )

 

I can't as I can't imagine what all those villagers would do, other then scrape the reef clean to eek a meager living. It's estimated the over 50K people in Sri Lanka alone are employeed by this trade, and that's not one of our major exporting nations of MO They may have had better ways of doing things in the past, but once most became semi westernized, most old habits went to the wayside.

 

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I agree about being excited about the day where all of it is aquacultured. In speaking with the LFS owners' wife that could be quite a while yet. In their years of experience--tank raised (aquacultured) stock does not sell that well. While anybody who has been in the hobby would realize that tank raised stock would be hardier and thus less of a chance of fatality when you get home--they tend to be a lot more expensive than wild caught stock. If you go to LFS A and find a watchman goby who has been tank raised for $40 and in the same town go to LFS B and find it for nearly half off or more of what store A's is people will normally buy that one.

I guess what really needs to happen is have people who get into it because they love it and not for the profit for it to really be feasible.

Well, just my two cents worth on this topic.

Anne

 

Not gonna happen unless the gov steps in and puts down restrictions or bans. God forbid. It would drastically change the hobby, and not necessarily for the better.

Hate to break it to you all but the reefs of the ocean are actually dying, and not because a collector snaps a sprouted branch off of an acropora colony, or because they cast a net and bag a bunch of blue-green chromis'. But this little thing called global warming is really screwing them up. Not just the temp change, but the killer uv rays, and the change in salinity as the polar ice caps melt too.

Now, I thought this catastrophe would happen once I and my grandchildren's children had gone. But I was astonished as yahoo posted a oneliner this week that stated that the Alaskan landscape has drastically changed due to the confounded Global Warming. Not to mention, how it's fed the warm-water hungry Super hurricanes that don't even come from Africa anymore, the last two blew from a small beach breeze into a full hurricane just off the coast of the Bahamas. They bash up reefs too you know. After Katrina trashed N.O., walking a local Gulf coast beach would have revealed tens of live gorgonia colonies and sea fans that washed up on the shore. If a hobbiest hadn't picked them up and traded into the LFS for credit those colonies would've died.

Basically, my opinion is that the only chance our reef creatures have for survival is in OUR controlled environments. And that my friends is MY two cents of nonsense.

 

I'm with him!!!!