MAWS – Beware the Fishy Herbivore?

05 Sep, 2013

Scandinavian scientists issue Pacu Warning to male skinny dippers

Summer months, often the doldrums for hard news, annually bring out shark-attack scare stories and flashbacks to hair-raising scenes in the movie JAWS, but for northern European swimmers the mid-summer chill this year has been provided by a herbivorous fish caught in the strait of Oresund between Denmark and Sweden.

In early August, fisherman Einar Lindgreen brought ashore a fish he had never before encountered, and, thinking it might be a piranha, sent it to the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen.

Ichthyologists were quick to identify the specimen as a pacu, a mostly herbivorous tetra that can attain massive sizes and that periodically turns up far from its native range in South America. Aquarists are usually blamed for releasing pacus notorious for outgrowing most home-scale tanks.

While reassuring the public that piranhas were not swimming free in Scandinavian waters, the museum scientists were not shy about warning male Danes and Swedes to think twice about skinny dipping where there was a possibility of more pacu lurking. “Anyone choosing to bathe in the Oresund had best keep your swimsuits well tied,” they advised.

Pacu, the biologists pointed out, have been nick-named “nutcracker fish” and “ball-cutters” for their reputed history of attacking and biting human testicles. Unverified reports from Papua New Guinea blame an introduced population of pacu for two fatal attacks on men who were castrated while wading in the Sepik River and bled to death.

Jeremy Wade’s “Hungry Pacu” Hypothesis

Jeremy Wade, “extreme angler” and host of the Animal Planet show River Monsters, helped etch the tale of the unfortunate Papuans with an episode entitled, The Mutilator. Wade says that the pacu were introduced in large numbers by a government agency in Papua New Guinea  in the mid-1990s to provide a new source of protein and a fish prized for its excellent eating qualities. However, the pacu are reported to have seriously upset the local ecosystems, overgrazing native vegetation to the point where the pacu were left ravenously hungry. Wade did catch a 40-pound pacu in the same region where the genital attacks were reported to have taken place.

Esquire Magazine recently interviewed Wade about his encounters with pacu:

Esquire.com: So when you were fishing for them did it make you nervous, knowing their reputation?

JW: I’m in a boat. The thing about the pacus in the Amazon is they’re normally vegetarians. If there’s plenty of their normal diet around, then they’re gonna be happy with that. It eats nuts and seeds that fall from the trees. They have got very powerful jaws and teeth, because some of these nuts are quite hard to crack. Some people say that the teeth look like human teeth, people in the fish world say that the closest thing to them is the teeth of a horse. The problem in Papua New is if there isn’t the normal food they’ll figure something out.

Esquire.com: So you think they’re attracted to testicles because they resemble nuts?

JW: I think if they’re hungry enough! For instance, lets look at “why do fish bite the parts that they bite?” A fish with a big mouth, like a catfish, they’ve been known to bite people’s legs. Normally not because they’re hungry, but because they’re protecting a nest or something like that. But piranhas, for example, are known to first bite the nose or ears, places where they can get some purchase. They’re not going to get purchase on a flat surface. They need a protrusion for them to get their mouths on, as they’ve got a very small mouth. That’s why I think if the pacu is really hungry… The other thing is, visibility is often not very good in fresh water. So if a fish bites something, a part of the body, it doesn’t actually always realize that it’s part of a body. It just sees something sort of waving around in front of it.

AMAZONAS Magazine‘s translator Stephan M. Tanner, Ph.D. was also interviewed by the Discovery Channel in the wake of the Scandinavian pacu stories and he said that fears of pacu proliferating in northern waters are extremely overblown.

“It’s a plant eater,” said Stephan Tanner, an editor and translator at Amazonas Magazine. “If you release it in Denmark, it won’t survive the winter. If you release it in Florida, it may swim for a long time. Will it reproduce? That’s another question.”

Meanwhile, another pacu measuring a foot in length was hooked by a fisherman in the River Seine in Paris in early September, fueling yet more lurid headlines and fear among ichthyophobes. Screamed The Mirror, of London, “Testicle-eating ‘ball-cutter’ fish could be heading for UK after being spotted in France.”

A number of different species carry the common name “pacu,” and the two most recent European catches have not yet been positively identified.  All are primarily herbivores, although they will also consume insects and smaller fish.

Reports of pacu caught in U.S. waters are commonplace. Wikipedia lists citations for catches in some 32 states: “Discoveries in the United States have been reported in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky , Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

State wildlife authorities typically advise home aquarists who wish to get rid of overgrown pacu to cut the heads off the fish and dispose of them as garbage. However, Habitattitude, a U.S. national initiative led by the Aquatic Nuisance Species (ANS) Task Force, recommends humanely disposing of the fish through a veterinarian or pet retailer, returning them to retailers, or donating them to a local aquarium society, school, or aquatic business.”

REFERENCES

Amazonas Magazine. Species Profile: Pacu.

Wade, Jeremy. The Nutcracker Fish, Animal Planet. Original air date: 10 April 2011.

Joiner, James.  Jeremy Wade Weighs In On The Nutcracker Fish. Esquire.com

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/jeremy-wade-on-the-nutcracker-fish

Niler, Eric. Testicle-Munching Fish: All That Dangerous? Discovery News, August 13, 2013.

Fishbase. Pacu, Piaractus mesopotanicus (Holmberg, 1887)

Brittle Stars: White Wedding

28 Aug, 2013

By Daniel Knop
Web Bonus Content from the September/October 2013 Issue of CORAL Magazine
Additional Bonus Brittle Star Articles

Spider-like, they emerged from all cracks and crevices. It looked almost like an alien invasion in a science fiction movie. Countless arms waved through the water, probed the environment, and attached themselves to rocks to pull themselves up. Each individual wanted to be first, to find the best place. The urge of a brittle star to climb—from the rock structure, up the aquarium glass, to the surface—is so powerful that some specimens came out of the water, standing on the bodies of their fellows. With almost blind zeal, half a hundred of these echinoderms assembled, as if following a secret command. However, it was not blind obedience or fear that drove them, but the irrepressible wish to reproduce: a brittle star wedding was imminent!

Unlike other invertebrates that mate and exchange their genetic material directly, free spawners must synchronize their germ cell release. Therefore, they need a trigger that sets in motion the complex reproductive process. For these brittle stars, often referred to as Ophiocoma pumila in the hobby, that trigger is a sudden change in the environment—in this case a partial water change. As soon as the fresh sea water had flowed into the aquarium and mixed with the old water, the first arms stretched out from under the rocks. Within moments the aquarium, which had shown no sign of a brittle star before the water change, was teeming with them. These animals normally hide during the day and come out at to scavenge at night, but now they suddenly moved out into the open, despite all the dangers, to comply with their biological directive: reproduction.

While most brittle star species are dioecious, some are hermaphroditic. Some free-spawning hermaphroditic species exclusively release sperm, while the oocytes remain in the body and are fertilized by the sperm of other individuals. The larvae of these hermaphroditic breeders remain in the respiratory cavities, or bursae, and mature there.

On each side of the armpit on the oral side there are slit-shaped genital openings to the bursae—sac-like invaginations that are usually used for respiration. The animal reduces its volume by contracting the oral disc muscles to eject water and increases its volume by breathing in oxygen-rich water. The bursae also contain the gonads. Here, the sperm mature and are stored in a low-liquid form. During spawning, the gonads empty the sperm into the bursae, which serve as reservoirs. The germ cells are diluted with water, so the amount of sperm that finally emerges through the openings at the bases of the arms appears to be very great.

In seemingly endless swells, this white mass exits through the genital slits, drips down, and forms elongated streaks in the open water. In contrast lighting, the five or six-armed stars look like comets with white tails. The sperm gradually mixes with the surrounding water to form a homogeneous, whitish mist that envelops everything.

Within about an hour, most of the 50 brittle stars had released sperm. Some had remained near their hiding places in the typical spawning posture, with exposed oral discs. However, most of the small echinoderms had taken the more daring path, climbing up to the water’s surface in order to ensure that their own genes were spread as widely as possible. Some in top form unloaded huge masses into the 16-gallon (60-L) aquarium. The turbidity was significant, but none of the other aquarium animals developed signs of a lack of oxygen or other discomfort. The skimmer continued to work normally and showed no tendency to bubble over. A short time later, the tiny reef had returned to normal and there was no sign of the brittle stars’ “white wedding.”

See You at MACNA South Florida

27 Aug, 2013

CORAL is heading to Hollywood….

Make that Hollywood, Florida, the site of the Marine Aquarium Conference of North America 2013, between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale on the Atlantic shore.

We can be found at Booth 507 (with Boyd Enterprises and the Coral Restoration Society) and across the aisle at Booth 407 with Two Little Fishies, who will be selling the Banggai Cardinalfish book, making its first appearance at MACNA.

These booths are at the entrance to the raffle area (and next to the expected hubbub at the Reef Geek booth, where the stars of the Animal Planet hit seriesTanked! Wayde King and Brett Raymer will again be holding court).

Find the booths and ask for the free collectible 2013 buttons for CORAL, the BANGGAI Book, and AMAZONAS.

More Information

MACNA 2013
BANGGAI CARDINALFISH Book
Two Little Fishies

Aquacultured Clarion Angel Comes to the US

09 Aug, 2013

Press Release. Quality Marine, 08-07-2013

In a Western Hemisphere First, An Aquacultured Clarion Angel is Available!

Quality Marine is proud to announce the first Aquacultured Clarion Angel (Holacanthus clarionensis) available for sale in North America. This fish was produced from a captive breeding at Bali Aquarich, where it was reared to a salable size. It was then shipped to the United Kingdom for a brief period and now it is beginning its North American tour in Southern California, here at Quality Marine.

What makes the Clarion so special?

The Clarion Angel is a gorgeous fish that adapts very well to aquarium environments. They are hardy and are “personable” tank inhabitants. Though they can be pugnacious with tank mates, they generally learn to recognize people as feeders and will interact with them.

This is a fish with a very limited distribution, coming only from shallow water tropical reef locations from the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico down to Clipperton Island. The majority of the species are found in the Revillagigedo Islands. The population size, distribution, and habitat that this fish prefers is so limited that it could easily be over exploited. It is currently listed as “vulnerable” by the IUCN Red List. Quality Marine does not import or stock wild Clarion Angels.

Biology / Captive Care

Juveniles of this species are generally solitary and territorial and occasionally have been seen acting as cleaner fish. Adults are generally also observed singly, and have also been observed acting as cleaners for very large rays. They also occasionally form large groups which some literature suggests is for breeding.

H. Clarionensis has a fairly small adult size at 7.8 inches. Like most fish in their genus, a large portion of their wild diet consists of sponge matter, with some aquarists reporting that coloration fades if food containing sponges is not offered. The blue barring of this juvenile fish will fade and it will end up being a brilliant gold coloration.

Quality Marine

Celebrating over 35 years in business, Quality Marine continues to provide the Public and Retail Aquarium industry with the highest quality, most sustainable and widest selection of both wild and aquacultured marine fish and invertebrates. Quality Marine works tirelessly to support responsible operators that collect in a sustainable manner and protect the reef habitat. We encourage all industry professionals to do the same. We continue to exhibit our commitment to helping make this industry a better one, to help protect our resources for not only the longevity of our trade, but also for the preservation of the environment. As our business grows, we still focus on the keys to our success, Quality, Variety, and Service, second to none.

–

Eli Fleishauer
Quality Marine

New Echinophyllia Stony Coral Species Found

31 Jul, 2013

Difficult to identify but often dazzlingly beautiful, Chalice corals are much-appreciate by many reef aquarists. Now a new species of this small genus of shallow-water Indo-Pacific stony corals has just been added to the roster of eight previously known Echinophyllia species. The new coral is described in a paper by Francesca Benzoni from the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy, and published in the journal ZooKeys on July 24, 2013.

Known as Echinophyllia tarae, the coral is reported to resemble E. echinata, well-known in the aquarium trade, as well as E. nishihirai, in living specimens. Skeletal analysis, however, reveals that the new species has a distinctive central corallite, as seen in the image above (right of center).

The author, says that many specimens were observed in the remote Gambier Archipelago apparently recovering from “partial death” caused by temporary burial in sediments. The green colony above, she says in the paper, shows “a concave colony with a large central corallite showing a peripheral rim of skeleton encrusted by pink coralline algae and surrounded by zoanthids and corallimorpharians at Mangareva Island. Echinophyllia tarae sp. n. is most commonly found at sheltered sites characterized by calm water conditions and muddy sediment which could be stirred up and deposit on benthic organisms suffocating them (Erftemeijer etal. 2012).”

Says the author: “The species is characterized by a high intraspecific variation of several morphologicaltraits. It also shows typical features that distinguish it from the otherEchinophyllia species and from Echinomorpha nishihirai, such as the dimensions and the protrusion of the largest corallite (centrally located in flat colonies), the thickness of the septa, and the development of the crown of paliform lobes. Although the new species is common in the Gambier Islands, its occurrence elsewhere is unknown. The sampling of coral tissue from the type specimens of E. tarae sp. n. will allow molecular analyses in order to examine its phylogenetic relationships with its congeners and other species in the Lobophylliidae.”

The new species was discovered during the 2011 Tara Oceans Scientific Expedition with MV Tara, the first new study of cnidarians in the Gambier Islands since the mid-1970s.

Sources

Echinophyllia tarae sp. n. (Cnidaria, Anthozoa, Scleractinia), a new reef coral species from the Gambier Islands, French Polynesia
Francesca Benzoni
ZooKeys 318: 59–79 (2013)
doi: 10.3897/zookeys.318.5351
www.zookeys.org

The Classroom Ocean – Club Impacts Far and Wide

01 Jul, 2013

Online supplemental content for The Classroom Ocean, by Nate Wilson, published in theJuly/August 2013 Issue of CORAL Magazine.
Supplemental #1 | Supplemental #2

The Reef Conservation Society’s Tanks for Schools program was featured in the July/August 2013 issue of CORAL Magazine. This program was started at Williamsport High School under the leadership of Lawrence Flint, a Physics and Chemistry teacher at Williamsport as well as the Vice President of Education for the Reef Conservation Society. In a prior installment, we visited the Walnut Street Christian School in Avis, PA.

Another teacher who involved in the Tanks in Schools program is Dwayne Kalinay. Kalinay teaches 124 seventh graders at Lake Lehman Jr. Sr. High School outside of Lehman, PA. His classroom resembles a small zoo. Aside from maintaining three reef tanks the class also raises and breeds African Cichlids, as well as keeping Snapping Turtles, Red Slider turtles, Anoles, Bearded Dragons, and millipedes in a host of tanks throughout the room.

As a second year teacher working in another district, Kalinay started his own classroom tank. He quickly realized how expensive it was. “I must have spent my first year salary on things for the class room. But it really helps to have things like this,” He gestures around the classroom, “to keep the kids interested.” When Kalinay started working at Lake Lehman he found out about RCS and the Tanks in School program.

The reefs in his classroom took off from there because of the additional knowledge and support available from the club. Every year since then Kalinay has added a new tank. “We started with the 90 gallon and then plumbed that together with the 110. Last summer we added the 65-gallon.” Both Kalinay and Larry are proud of the 65 because it has zero impact on the wild reefs and was set up like the tank at Walnut St; mined rock seeded in the Williamsport systems, fragged coral and a pair of tank raised clown fish.

The tanks at Lehman are very popular with the students and are used not just by Kalinay’s biology classes but also by other science, art, and life skills classes. Because of the tanks and his class being extremely interactive Kalinay’s room is often used for student and parent orientations. It has also become a popular stop on most school visits.

Like the reef tanks in other schools supported by the club, Kalinay’s aquariums are an excellent teaching resource. A reef tank can be used to teach many science concepts such as interaction, relationships, biotic and abiotic factors, parasitism, symbiosis, and adaptation. Students discuss and learn about why reef creatures are often more brightly colored than freshwater fishes and invertebrates. “Not all these elements are part of what needs to be taught in seventh grade science. But,” Kalinay says, “they can be taught and help the students to better understand how the ecosystem in a reef tank functions.”

Being able to teach students a skill through a hands on experience is often more engaging then a worksheet or an exercise that appears to exist ‘just because’. Kalinay explains it this way. “ As a kid what would you rather do measure a line in the hallway or measure a glass box with star fish and clown fish swimming along the side? With a tank I can have the students measure it and then calculate volume. It’s a real world application and the more hands on stuff you can do the more it mixes things up for them and keeps them interested in learning.You have to remember that 7th graders are 12 years old.”

Like Larry Flint, Kalinay is also hands on. The LEDs over the 65-gallon tank were put together by students in his class. “It is just another example of real-world learning; they are 12 and 13 years old and they have built a lighting fixture. With the tanks we can talk about all kinds of stuff and they now have a place to draw experience from. It’s practical learning, not just picking from choices A-E. “

By taking care of the reef tanks the students also learn to appreciate wild reefs. They see how small things have big impacts. Kalinay says that he is surprised how invested kids become in the tank.

“When something goes wrong they react to it. One year I had a fish die and there were kids who cried about it. They had watched it and fed it all year and it upset them. Sometimes you have pieces of coral that start to lighten up and bleach. They get upset. It shows that they care about whats happening in the tank and that they know what bleaching is. That is something they can read about in a newspaper article and now they understand from experience. It’s tremendous that they know about it is because they learned it here with the tanks. We try to figure out what happened and they see how a small change in something like alkalinity or pH affects the whole system.”

Kalinay’s honors students learn how to frag coral using bone cutters to cut pieces from a larger colony. They then super glue each frag onto rubble rock or ceramic plugs. Students will grow the frags out in a 40 gallon tank located in the supply closet. They measure growth to practice their metrics skills and use iPads to take photos and document the changes from week to week. Careers in science are also touched upon by studying the classroom reefs. Kalinay has the kids read an article about coral farming and restoration in Florida, and then ties it in with what they are doing in the frag tank.

“They learn about conservation and sustainability by fragging the coral that we have here. We know from reading about the coral farming and restoration that we can rebuild a reef. By exposing students to a captive reef, something that they really don’t get to see here in Pennsylvania, they learn to value wild ones. If they value it they are more likely realize that we should try and preserve them.”

By fragging coral and selling it to local hobbyists and pet shops, Kalinay is also able to show his students that keeping a reef can be sustainable. Money from sales of coral goes back into the class room systems. Raising the frags becomes more than just a teaching tool showing how an organism propagates asexually, or how to measure its growth. Students gain the realization that what they are doing helps maintain their own classroom reef . Kalinay states, “The kids see that what we do is important to our own reef. We take the frags we make here and we sell them. The money goes back into our tanks to keep them supplied. I have used the money for things like more coral cutters in the past and now I am saving to upgrade the 90 and the 110 with LED lighting. On the other side of it the people who buy the coral get a piece that didn’t come out of the oceans. “

When asked how much the kids help with the tanks outside of class, Kalinay says that there are four or five past students that take time out of their lunch or study halls to come down and help out. “Aside from the initial set-ups or moving around rock I don’t really touch the tanks anymore. The students do everything; testing, dosing, feeding and cleaning the glass. After three years we have it down to an exact science. I don’t have to come in and check after the weekend to make sure everything is still alive. It’s a good feeling”

Next year Kalinay plans on expanding his setup even further. “I am looking to add a 75-gallon tank. My plan is to have it viewable from all sides. Then I want to rearrange the tanks I have now. The 110 is going to be a predator tank so that the kids can see a different aspect of life on the reef.”

Having the club provide support is invaluable to Kalinay and other teachers involved in the program. In an era, where public education budgets have been decimated across Pennsylvania and the country, Kalinay is happy to point this out. “I know that I will be able to get the rock and the initial livestock for the next tank from Larry. The club really makes this sustainable. It’s not doable on this scale otherwise. The way that Larry has it set up is great. They have provided me with the past three years’ worth of supplies, coral, clownfish, rock, and frags. They donated the tanks. Each year I get money for supplies like food, dosing chemicals, etc. They give us salt from Reef Crystals and they have no restrictions about who I buy my supplies from. They are very trusting. I send them pictures every few months as a show of good faith that I am taking care of things. Larry comes down like once a year to see how things are. If I want help setting up a tank or have questions I know that he (Larry) is there.”

“If I want help setting up a tank or have questions I know that he is there. “ That statement sums up what Larry Flint and the club are doing. Landlocked in Pennsylvania, Flint and the Reef Conservation Society are working to save the wild reefs by being there, doing what they can; building awareness and appreciation one school tank at a time.

The Reef Conservation Society continually seeks to build relationships with new school sites and interested partners. You can view more about the club’s Tanks in Schools program atwww.ReefConservationSociety.org .

Set to launch at the Marine Aquarium Conference of North America (MACNA 2013) in South Florida, The Banggai Cardinalfish book represents almost two years’ of work and the involvement of hundreds of saltwater aquarists, marine biologists, aquarium industry leaders, and many conservation-minded supporters.

For a preview of the book, see this video by Matt Pedersen that runs through the entire 304 pages in about a minute and shows the scope of the international Banggai Rescue Project.

The book will be distributed by Julian Sprung and Two Little Fishies in partnership with Reef to Rainforest Media, publishers of CORAL and AMAZONAS Magazines.

“This book should make us all proud to be marine aquarists,” says Editor & Publisher James Lawrence. “The marine aquarium community has rallied to respond to a situation in which a uniquely beautiful and fascinating fish has been threatened by unregulated collection in a remote archipelago in Indonesia. We have unwittingly been part of the problem, but now we can feel that we are part of the solution.”

“Perhaps the most important outcome of the Project so far has been the collaboration between our science team and their counterparts in Indonesia who are working to reform the Banggai Cardinal fishery while supporting the livelihoods of indigenous fishers in their own waters.”

Book Credits::

Ret Talbot • Matt Pedersen • Matthew L. Wittenrich, Ph.D.

Foreword by Dr. Gerald R. Allen

with Martin A. Moe, Jr., Roy Yanong, V.M.D., and Thomas Waltzek, D.V.M., Ph.D.

Publishing Team:

Edited by James M. Lawrence

Designed by Linda Provost

Production: Anne Linton Elston

Copyediting: Louise Watson, Alex Bunten

Business Manager: Judith R. Billard

Project Corporate Sponsors

Books will be available at MACNA, August 30 to September 1 at the Two Little Fishies booth.

Announcements coming soon about how to order the book.

Source: Banggai-Rescue.com

New Killifish Species from Cameroon

21 Jun, 2013

A strikingly handsome new species of killifish from the Pama River, a small tributary of the Nyong River flowing into the Gulf of Guinea in Central Africa’s Republic of Cameroon has been described by a team of European researchers.

The authors, from France’s Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution, Université Montpellier, describe the fish’s distinctive orange and blue-grey pigmentation and report that DNA testing has found that the new species is “genetically differentiated from all the other Chromaphyosemion species.” The official description appears in the journal ZOOTAXA, 3670 (4): 516-530.

The fish was first collected in 2007 Jean-Francois Agnese followed by additional field research in 2008 and 2010.

Information on the subgenus Chromaphyosemion, native to ponds and small rivers in West Africa, can be found on the All About Chromaphyosemion web site.

ARTICLE
Published 14 June 2013, ZOOTAXA

Aphyosemion pamaense, a new killifish species (Cyprinodontiformes: Nothobranchiidae) from Cameroon
JEAN-FRANCOIS AGNESE, OLIVIER LEGROS, BENOITE CAZAUX, GUILLAIN ESTIVALS
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11646%2Fzootaxa.3670.4.6

Abstract

Aphyosemion pamaense sp. nov. is described from the Pama River, a small tributary of the Nyong, in the surroundings of Pama, Cameroon. It belongs to the subgenus Chromaphyosemion Radda, 1971 and is distinguished from its relatives by a unique/diagnostic combination of characters: orange unpaired fins, an anal fin without spots, an orange throat and purple to blue-grey flanks. The new species is also genetically differentiated from all the other Chromaphyosemion species as revealed by mtDNA (cytochrome b) analysis and characterised by a unique karyotype showing tentative sex chromosomes with 2n=35 chromosomes in males versus 2n=36 in females.

Further Information

All About Chromaphyosemion an evolving website for “killiphiles” published in French, but with translation available via Google Translate. Copyright © 1998-2013 – Olivier Legros.

India’s Underground Fish Trade

28 Jun, 2013

New Paper Suggests Sustainability is Not Just a Discussion for Saltwater Aquarists

By Ret Talbot

Over the past few years, freshwater aquarists may have noticed activists increasingly targeting their saltwater counterparts, seeking, for example, the complete ban on marine aquarium fish collection and exports from Hawaii. Other advocacy groups are attempting to have some common fish and coral species protected under the Endangered Species Act.

While many attacks on the marine aquarium trade are bluster born of emotion and largely devoid of accurate scientific data, there do exist real concerns about the overall sustainability of the global marine aquarium trade. Those concerns are, in the best of cases, spurring discussions amongst stakeholders—amateur aquarists, importers, representatives of public aquaria—about the future of the trade and its impacts on ecosystems, fishers and fisher communities in impoverished developing island nations.

The same level of debate is not occurring amongst freshwater aquarists. This is generally assumed to be because the freshwater trade is primarily reliant on aquacultured livestock, not animals collected from the wild.

While roughly 90 percent of the marine aquarium trade’s animals originate on reefs, only about 10 percent of freshwater aquarium fishes have ever seen a natural ecosystem. Is the freshwater trade therefore above reproach when it comes to sustainability? Perhaps not: A paper just published in the journal Biological Conservation about India’s freshwater aquarium trade is the most recent paper to document problems that may warrant freshwater aquarists taking a more active role in the aquarium sustainability dialog.

Threatened and Endangered Endemic Fishes

At the heart of the Biological Conservation paper is the concern that India’s freshwater aquarium trade is having a detrimental impact on endangered, highly endemic fishes frequently harvested and exported for aquarium usage.

Just shy of one-third of all freshwater fishes exported from India for the aquarium trade between 2005-2012—the paper pegs the number at about 1.5 million animals—are listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species as either threatened or endangered. While some of these 30 species are exported in small numbers, others such as the Malabar Pufferfish (Carinotetraodon travancoricus), Zebra Loaches (Botia striata), Denison Barbs (Puntius denisonii) and P. chalakkudiensis (the latter two commonly called Redlined Torpedo Barbs or RLTBs) are exported in relatively large numbers. Most of the fishes are exported to Southeast Asian markets, where some are re-exported—many no longer bearing their country of origin information—to North America and Europe.

In addition to the aquarium trade’s impact on threatened and endangered species, the paper explores the impact on India’s endemic species. According to lead author, Rajeev Raghavan of University of Kent’s Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE) in the United Kingdom, at least 22 endemic species of freshwater fishes are threatened by India’s aquarium trade. While nine of them show a continuing decline in their populations, they continue to be harvested with very little (if any) science-based, adaptive fishery management in place. What little regulation has been put in place following several years of growing concern about these fisheries is, according to the paper, routinely subverted or simply ignored.

An Obscure, Open-Access Trade

The trouble with India’s freshwater fishery is alluded to in the paper’s title—“Uncovering an obscure trade: Threatened freshwater fishes and aquarium pet markets.” “Obscurity,” in one form or another, is a common problem when it comes to resource management in developing nations with resource extraction industries like forestry and fisheries. Lack of management, lack of transparency, lack of scientific data, and lack of regulation all contribute to the precarious position of vulnerable natural resources.

While there have been some efforts to protect endangered endemic fishes in India, fishers—and even more importantly middlemen who purchase from fishers—have proven effective at circumventing regulations. In several examples cited in the paper, endangered species only existing in protected areas where no fishing is allowed are being exported for the aquarium trade.

“In India,” Raghavan and his co-authors write, “the country that harbors the most number of endemic freshwater fishes in continental Asia, collection of such species for the aquarium trade is entirely open-access, unregulated and even encouraged by certain governmental and semi-governmental agencies.”

The paper focuses on the example of the RLTBs, “whose unmanaged collection during the last two decades is associated with severe population declines and an ‘Endangered’ listing in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.” As the authors of the paper recount, the growing global concerns about this fishery did in fact lead to increased regulation in India. In 2008, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, the Department of Fisheries issued a government order, which restricted collection and exports and applied several adaptive management tools. “[R]ecent studies indicate that these regulations were developed with minimum scientific input and offer little protection for the species,” say the authors. For example, a closed season was established based on assumptions about when the fishes breed, but scientific study has shown the assumed breeding times are incorrect. Further, with a lack of reliable, comprehensive data about the trade, it has been difficult to set effective quotas and size restrictions.

Speculation Rather Than Facts?

Raghaven is not without his critics, and some of them worry the paper focuses undue and disproportionate attention on the aquarium trade as the primary threat to the species in question. They point out the data presented in the paper is, at best, incomplete, and without complete data, it is easy to extrapolate conclusions that lack context and are more speculation than fact. They maintain India’s freshwater aquarium trade is “not an obscure one” and that the Marine Products Exports Development Authority (MPDEA) under the Commerce Ministry in India, while not perfect, is doing a competent job of managing the trade. “The fact that the authors were not able to take data from MPEDA and customs in Kochi, India does not mean that the customs and MPEDA do not maintain these files or records,” says one industry insider in India, contradicting statements made in the paper.

Most of the individuals critical of the paper, many of them industry observers with firsthand knowledge of India’s freshwater fishery, agree in principle with the paper’s thesis—that there are significant problems with the freshwater aquarium fishery—but they warn the situation is far more nuanced than the paper suggests. “Mislabeling species and dodging regulations is business as usual in India’s aquarium trade,” says one stakeholder. “Overfishing is common and management is non-existent, but the situation is not as bad as the paper makes it out to be. It’s a very small number of fish that are collected by fishers.”

Many stakeholders in India and abroad are taking an active role in making the Nation’s freshwater aquarium trade better. Stakeholders are addressing issues such as reporting and oversight, supply chain mortality and a lack of emphasis on breeding India’s endemic species in India. In 2012, The Conference on Sustainable Ornamental Fisheries; Way Forward identified key challenges India’s ornamental fish industry will have to face in the future and recommendations for moving forward with a sustainable freshwater aquarium trade reliant on a combination of wild harvest and aquaculture. Identifying challenges and making recommendations for improvements is an important step as India moves along the path to a more sustainable freshwater aquarium trade, but actually implementing those recommendations is the hard part, especially given the coordination required between government and non-government entities.

As one industry insider in India says, “It is high time that the ornamental fish industry in India stands united and look at this issue of conservation and the conservationists seriously and try to justify if the activities carried out by them fall to a sustainable trade.”

Aquarium Trade Unfairly Singled Out?

Critics of the aquarium livestock industry, both freshwater and marine, have a longstanding habit of singling out the trade when other issues are having a far larger impact on ecosystems and species.

“I am not saying that the information provided by the authors on the state of the indigenous Indian species is wrong,” says an industry observer. “I fear that the situation might indeed be very bad for some of the species. I am also not saying that the ornamental fish trade is innocent. It is very likely that there is overfishing in some—possibly in many—areas. But I do get the feeling that a small-volume, high-value trade has been singled out as an appropriate target because of its visibility, rather than because of its size.”

The paper acknowledges other anthropogenic stressors such as sand mining, construction of dams and pollution from pesticides are all contributing to the crisis for many of these highly endemic fishes. Further, the paper points out, some of the species are targeted as both aquarium fishes and food fishes, and indiscriminate fishing and blast fishing are both relatively common in India.

As is frequently cited by advocates of the aquarium trade, collecting fishes for aquarium usage certainly has an impact, but they maintain it’s very small compared to much more significant assaults on aquatic ecosystems. While this may be true, conservationists point out the impact of even minimal fishing on a species restricted to an extremely small area can be profound. An example cited in the paper is the endangered species Garra hughi, the Cardamon Garra, a stone sucker with an endemic range believed to be less than 300 square kilometers (116 sq. mi.). Should this species really be harvested from its extremely small range for the aquarium trade?

Easy Answers, Easy Targets and Shooting Fishes in Barrels

If the aquarium trade’s impact is so minimal compared to other impacts, why does it receive a disproportionate amount of attention from those claiming to be “speaking for the fishes”—people like Robert Wintner or any of the numerous NGOs with anti-trade agendas. One easy answer to this question is that the aquarium trade is, to use a cliché, the lowest hanging fruit. Largely disorganized, underfunded and fragmented, the aquarium trade has proven relatively ineffective at presenting a unified front with a science-based sustainability platform. To continue with the bad idioms, attacking the aquarium trade is a bit like shooting fish in barrel.

That’s the easy answer—that the trade is an easy target. The far more complex answer must take into account the totality of the trade. Sure, far fewer fishes are harvested for aquaria than are harvested for food, and even the most careless aquarium fisher does considerably less damage than a trawl net or blast fishing. But keeping an aquarium is never framed as a necessity the way eating fish is. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide—many in developing nations—depend on eating fish as a critical source of protein, but how many people’s lives hang on keeping an aquarium?

Most people perceive keeping an aquarium as a pastime or hobby—even a luxury one—and as such the environmental impacts associated with collecting aquarium fishes invite greater scrutiny. The average member of the public—a non-aquarist—hears that endangered, endemic fishes in India are being further threatened by collection for fish tanks, and what is he or she to conclude? Thinking about the aquarium trade this way makes it perhaps a little easier to understand why some people believe the easy answer is that if there is to be an aquarium trade at all, it should be 100-percent dependent on aquaculture.

Aquarium Fisheries as Agents of Positive Change

Of course the easy answer of relying exclusively on the farming of fishes, invertebrates, and plants for the aquarium trade fares no better than other easy answers.

While only a small percentage of freshwater fishes originate in the wild, collection impact can, nonetheless, be significant. For example, a well-documented freshwater aquarium fishery in Brazil is showing how sustainable aquarium fisheries can provide some of the best incentive to conserve critical habitat, while at the same time providing important socio-economic development opportunities that keep local fishers and fisher communities connected to the resource.

Unfortunately, the opposite can also be the case as the paper in Biological Conservation contends. While the fishery in Brazil’s middle Rio Negro basin is a model suggesting more sustainable freshwater aquarium fisheries in the developing world could be a real asset from both an environmental and socio-economic standpoint, India’s freshwater aquarium fishery, as presented in the paper, is an example of what can go wrong when a fishery remains largely unregulated and understudied.

As in the example of Brazil’s middle Rio Negro basin freshwater fishery, we know sustainable aquarium fisheries can be primary drivers behind critical ecosystem conservation. We also know sustainable aquarium fisheries can be very good for fishers and fisher communities from a socio-economic standpoint. In some cases, sustainable aquarium fisheries can be the best, most expedient paths to creating real economic incentive to conserve, and there are already pilot programs and plans to turn India’s freshwater aquarium fishery into a success story similar to the middle Rio Negro basin, but these programs need the support of the aquarium trade and, ultimately, aquarists.

The real answer to all of these complex questions is for those of us who care to have the dialog. Freshwater aquarists, like their saltwater counterparts, need to be thinking more about sustainability in the big picture. They need to engage in discussions at their local fish stores, in their clubs and through the aquarium media. They need to be willing to use their purchasing power at the point of sale to make educated choices that will help move the aquarium trade down the path to greater sustainability. And they must, of course, keep in mind that the clock is always ticking for species like the Zebra Loach, a highly endemic species that is thought to occupy less than 400 square kilometers and yet was identified in the Biological Conservation article as one of India’s main aquarium exports.

About the Author

Ret Talbot writes frequently about sustainability issues and is a senior contributing editor of AMAZONAS and CORAL Magazines. He lives with his wife Karen in Rockland, Maine.

SOURCES

The First Lightning Maroon Captive-Breds: What Am I Bid?

21 Jun, 2013

Three years after a strikingly pigmented aberrant morph of Premnas biculeatus was collected off Fisherman’s Island in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and quickly made headlines throughout the aquarium world, the first captive-bred Lightning-type offspring are about to reach the open market via an online auction.

Dubbed the PNG Lightning Maroon Clownfish, the prize catch was imported by Dave Palmer’s Pacific Aqua Farms in Los Angeles and placed with amateur breeder Matt Pedersen through its retail affiliate Blue Zoo Aquatics.  Pedersen was the MASNA Aquarist of the Year in 2009, in recognition of his breakthrough success in acclimating and breeding the Harlequin Filefish,Oxymonacanthus longirostris, an obligate corallivore. (Full disclosure, Pedersen is a CORAL Magazine senior editor.)

An online auction is set to begin sometime on the weekend beginning June 22nd of a limited number of young Lightning Maroons, as well as several full siblings that display white bars but none of the distinctive dappling of the original wild broodstock. Pedersen says that the first round of bidding will include “five F1 offspring: two with the “Lightning” pattern (and presumably Lightning genetics) and three non-Lightnings with more classic “White Stripe” patterning, the normal 3-stripe form, although one fish in particular has some additional spotting.  (Images of all fish are being posted on the Lightning Maroon blogsite.)

According to Blue Zoo Aquatics director Mark Martin, “These F1 PNG beauties are the only available PNG bloodline Maroon Clownfish left on the market AND they are the first Lightning patterned clownfish to hit the market since Mama Lightning was imported and sold to Matt almost three years ago. The auctions will be open to anybody with an eBay account in the US and the first shipments to the lucky winners will hit around the first week of July.”

Details of the auction can be found on the Blue Zoo site. Martin invites interested aquarists to sign up for newsletter updates. More details on the breeding of the fish can be found on Matt Pedersen’s blog, The Lightning Project.

Breeding Considerations

“Since we don’t know how Lightning genetics work,” says Pedersen, “I cannot say whether the regularly patterned siblings carry an important Lightning genetic component (like a hidden recessive gene) or not.  It is my hunch, however, that the Lightning trait is either a dominant or partially dominant trait, although with the 50/50 split (Lightnings to “Classic Maroons”) in the first generation offspring, the possibility of a recessive trait is there.

Future Stock Available?

Will more be coming? “If things go well with the initial five being auctioned by Blue Zoo, there are approximately 25 additional siblings that we’ll sell in this manner,” says Pedersen.

His Lightning broodstock are on hiatus right now, following the recent birth of Matt and Renee Pedersen’s second child, a daughter named Audrey.