would this be uneathical?

my view on the "is this ethical" question in general...

if you have to ask...

 

I would have to highly disagree. In now way, shape, or form are deer on the very brink of being wiped off the planet completely. Which, as sad as it is, is where we are at with coral. Its very plausible that even within my own life, the only reefs left will be the ones in our tanks. I don't want this to happen, personally.

 

This is a tough one.

I would typically say that I would not do it. But this would all depend on so many factors that it may not be possible to accurately gauge the ethical aspect of this.

I know that where I dove in Puerto Rico, that some areas of the reef were doing extremely well, despite there only being some places that were protected from any collection.

That said, trying to find spiny lobster, or the huge grouper even in the refuges was almost impossible. This of course, due to overfishing and a lack of laws regarding collection.

 

Coral is far from being on the brink, lets face it...if it were "on the brink" there would be no "unprotected area's". I wasn't aware there were such area's at all - and there shouldn't be at that.

But on the other side of the coin - If you are in your legal right than that's that. I personally wouldn't touch or take - even if it was legal. But if you are leaning towards the other side and are going to take legally, I suggest fragging the coral and making something of it.

As for your remark about reef in your life time, I hear you...I am big in it as well....but I am also big on my rights - I'll yell the loudest, but not at someone well within his rights.

Pollution and coral bleaching - now there's something to get peeved over, this is why the reefs may be gone in the next 100 years.

http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/students/coral/coral5.htm

 

It's a grey area if legal but, I think there's so many frags being swapped and bought from locals I can't see finding something in the sea that I would find it necessary to take it. The way I see it if the artificial reefs are untouched and seed new real reefs the more the better. Now if I was on the great barrier reef and found the ultimate scolymia and it was legal to take it.... I would have a hard time resisting...(If I knew that I'm not endangering anything).

 

I think some posts are confusing "rights" with "ethics". They are not the same thing and often contradict. Please note, I'm not making a comment on which one is of higher importance.


Probably also confusing "rights" with "not against the law" (and by extension, confusing "ethics" with "not against the law"). Again, not the same thing though much more similar than rights is to ethics. "Rights" are specifically granted (e.g. Bill of Rights). Not against the law is jut not addressed one way or the other (e.g. locking your car door).


So to OP original question of ethics... the law is irrelevant in determining ethics. (Though I would hope ethics are not irrelevant in determining law, maybe).


Your ethics only apply to yourself and shouldn't be pushed onto anyone else (your own kids withstanding ). The law, however, applies to us all.


Like I said earlier, if you have to ask if something is ethical... it's probably not. At least not to yourself and that's the point. To yourself be true. to paraphrase.

 

Nice clarification, I agree.

 

Wow! Is nice to see so many posts! I really like this and you guys have given me some more to think about but I feel I have some things to explain.

Ok, I live in Venezuela, My country is located in the north-center part of South America (come on Google earth is easy to use) it's shaped like a weird hammer or something, we are right next to brazil and Colombia almost in the middle of both countries.

Every Island in Venezuela is a protected area and about 45% or all shores are also protected areas, just to dive in there you need a permit, all other areas although extremely beautiful you can dive with no permit but we all (divers) try our best not to disrupt these ecosystems since there are almost no natural reefs directly or near the shore and those that exists are all in protected areas.

I have always been very careful to never touch a coral in my life and to this day I haven’t touched even one single coral in the wild, my friends of the diving school/resort (forgot that) have set over the years 5 different artificial ship wrecks to add some color to the almost non existent reefs in our shores I have helped in 3 of them.

The place I am taking the LR and LS is a place where the people who supply the stores take the LR and LS from so I think there's no problem skipping the middleman on that part besides I don’t think we are either running out of LS or LR in that area, most of the LR you find there is actually placed there to become alive (not really aqua cultured is mostly pieces or ancient reefs that went above sea level some thousand of years ago).

In here you can't find those great an amazing corals like acroporas and some of the best SPS around but we don't want to either disrupt nor take anything from a "wild" reef, we would take the frags from those shipwrecks I told you about before in this post, so technically you could call the corals in those ships "wild aqua cultured" that's why I didn't say NO when he gave me the idea, it would be more expensive but at least I can choose from a greater variety.

A little thing about saltwater aquaria in my country: it is almost inexistent, there are only 5 shops in my city (the capital) that actually work with saltwater, although fish keeping is very popular here marine is so expensive most people don’t even go there, so the ones that actually want to get a marine aquarium need to pay high prices (often 3 to 5 times the same item price in the U.S) or order from abroad, I am doing both. Aqua cultured corals and nonexistent here.

As an opinion I don't truly know if marine aquaria is "green" or not because yes we are taking wild caught animals from the sea, but we are not really polluting it (except off course the use of cyanide to collect fish but that's completely against the law in here and the jail time for it is 10 years in a third world penitentiary system go figure) , think about it like tuna, we (humans) take tuna out of the sea and eat it, we (aquarists) take animals and plants out the sea and take the best possible care of it, that's a tricky one isn't it?

Yes, Venezuela is a Third world country that is being ruled by the moment by an almost dictator/communist (some kind of cheap Lenin although not so much of a genocide for the time being), the currency value has been greatly decreased and law is almost inexistent in most aspects of life but not the environment, we Venezuelans take great pride in our land respect it but also enjoy it within reason.

The parasite thing is what worries me the most, a reef tanks doesn't have the same "advantages" as fish only aquariums do where you can dose medications easily. Parasites or anything else that shouldn’t be in the tank worries me a lot.

Reefs are not in danger in Venezuela, corals either, IF there is something i shouldn't touch (that great colorful sole coral in the middle of the reef) i wont touch it, only what there is in abundance, besides i am not going to dive by myself i am actually going with my friend who knows much more of the venezuelan coral diversity than me and he will make sure of that. Actually it was a surprise to see he was talking about even touching coral even more taking a frag from them but after he told me a litle frag wont do any difference and since i helped put those ships in place he told me "it is like you have earned those litle pieces of coral".

 

Nice. I cut out some of your post so as not to make this forever long.

By not being a green hobby, we are referring to the amount of electricity we use on chillers, heaters, MH lights, etc. How much water we waste to make RO/DI, etc. Just FYI.

I am actually surprised you had the gonads to put that about your "president". ;D +k.


Nice post. Informative.

 

Personally, I look at it this way: When I think about illegals entering the country, it's not the fact that they are coming to america (I more than welcome them), its the fact that there are so many people jumping through hoops and doing the dance to enter America properly. It's not right that so many people just hop the border when thousands of others are coughing up their pride and money. Same thing with corals, entrpeneurs have to go through a long process to get that license, putting up alot of money up front.