610 Fish Thrown out at Honokohau

[friscuba]

The Holland/Meyer reference I could find might not be the one you are talking about, it put the number of recreational users causing the bulk of the damage at 16%.

It took a lot of looking to find that Williams, Walsh study you are looking at, I'm thinking I got the right one... http://www.coralreefnetwork.com/kona/Williams%20et%20al%202009.pdf It's nice in that it has the years 2000-2007 and numbers compared for long term protected areas, FRA areas, near- FRA areas and openly collected areas. Looking at the chart comparisons for all of those years, there were significant population density increases in the FRA and nearby areas, the long term didn't change much, and the openly collected area remained steady except in the year 2007, which it dropped following the one poor juvenile yellow tang recruitment year (specifically mentions that in the text) during the study. That is the only year your "5 times" ratio claim could be made, assuming that's where you found the info. The study does mention "There are therefore limits to what we can conclude about the net effect of West Hawaii MPAs on current or future fishery yields" towards the end of the paper, but my read of the study seems to be positive in the direction management is going.

I'm not against further management efforts.

By the way.... I think linking is good. It gives people opportunity to verify information themselves. Here's a link I just found before this post which basically links to most of the major studies on the efforts made in West Hawaii.... WHAP: West Hawai'i Aquarium Project in case people want to look further into the studies.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

These same researchers and managers reported to the West Hawaii Fisheries Council that blue lined butterflyfishes, teardrop butterflyfishes are ~99% gone along with other species heavily collected and found abundantly in the 1970's. As you may know, the blue lined butterflyfish is one of the rarest fish in the world - found only in Hawaii with no known relatives elsewhere. They know this yet did not put bag limits on these species.

Just looking for info, not condoning collecting; so you are of the opinion Keoki Stender's butterflyfish page is wrong when it says the abundance of the bluestriped butterflyfish is fairly common?

Hawaiian Butterflyfishes

 

[octodiver]

It is certainly not common on any of the reefs I dive - though I see more of them in the protected areas. Here's what the DLNR says about them where they are the most heavily collected:
View attachment Are There Grounds For Concern.pdf

 

[rgbmatt]

The bluestripe butterfly is common on Oahu, but rare on Maui and Big Island. Over here it's one of the more abundant butterflies in some areas. This is normal - a lot of species are common on some islands but rare in others. Keep in mind that, although it is an endemic species, Hawaii (Big Island to Kure) is the world's longest island chain and 80% of it is protected. So, it's probably not among the world's rarest fish and the chances of it going extinct from overfishing are nigh impossible.

Kona is not where they are most heavily fished - it's Oahu, where they are abundant and always have been. Also note that in the "grounds for concern" pdf, the two areas mentioned are closed to collecting.

Some other comments:

- The quote from Bob Fenner about 99% of Hawaiian fish dying within a year is false. For those who don't know him, Mr. Fenner is a very well respected aquarist, avid scuba diver, and conservation advocate. The 99% quote was pulled from an article dealing with the aquarium trade in the developing world, where cheap labor and poor infrastructure sometimes do cause a lot of fish mortality and the survival rate can be pretty awful. The full article is here:
MarUsePets

However, he also says (on the same website) that fish from Hawaii do not suffer this fate:
"Hawaiian livestock is a winner. They are worth every penny; they live due to better handling, public regulation, shorter flight times, and better initial quality."
CollHIWay

Ironically, putting us out of business in Hawaii, where we do take good care of our fish, would only shift the demand to places of the world where fish husbandry is not as good.

- The statement about yellow tangs living for 40 years is true. It comes from this study:
http://www.coralreefnetwork.com/kona/Claisse_etal2008YellowTangSurvival.pdf

However, this is the exception rather than the rule - most fish in the wild are killed long before reaching that age. the same paper in the above link states: "Only about 1% of recruits may survive to adulthood when protected from fishing." Those are terrible odds, and much worse than their survival rate in captivity.

- The Big Island aquarium fishery, although controversial, is very well monitored by the state. Fish populations have not declined since the FRA system was put in place ten years ago; the fishery is sustainable and this is consistently reflected in the scientific literature. Nor has reef health in the area been affected - open and closed areas have consistently shown the same levels of coral cover and algal abundance. You can always pick out some statistic that makes it look like the resource is in trouble, but it's not the conclusion that the scientists are reaching. This is reflected in the aforementioned Williams/Walsh 2009 paper and all of its predecessors. This article is a very good summary:
http://hawaii.gov/dlnr/dar/coral/pdfs/6_FISHLIFE_YellowTang.pdf

As humans, we are part of the natural world and everything we do affects the environment in one way or another. Since we're on an island, it all ends up affecting the ocean. You can argue all day about which impact is worse than the other.

Debating the ethics of keeping fish as pets is perfectly legitimate, and should be encouraged since this is a free country. However, everyone is bound to have a different opinion on these matters and you can't expect everyone to agree with one viewpoint.

 

[octodiver]

Yeah Fenner and others in the trade are real fish lovers: he wrote that the animal losses in the industry are acceptable because theses animals are the livestock needed to fuel the lucrative dry goods trade (tanks, lights, chemicals). And, they're sold as loss leaders, so yeah, there's a lot of fish lovin' goin' on in this industry.

There are about 700,000 salt water aquarists on the mainland - so you can see the motivation here.

Since the mid 1970's, according to DLNR reports, at least 10 million yellow tangs and other fishes, hermit crabs, shrimps, feather duster worms and nudibranchs, have been ripped from Hawaii's reefs and sold in the trade so they can die, get tossed in the trash (just like the collector at Honokohau did), and then replaced like cut flowers.

Add to that the ~8 million imported annually from the P.I. and Indonesia and you see why this is called a disposable pet trade.

By the way, from the late 1970's to the 1990's Blue lined butterflies were collected by the thousands annually on Oahu. They are now down to a few hundred collected a year. During the same period on the Big Island they were collected by the hundreds annually and now are down to less than a dozen.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

Well it would still be nice to properly quote people and use studies to talk about the areas that were actually studied.

When conservationists use BS for arguments they end up looking worse than Al Gore.

 

[octodiver]

It would be nice to reference some current material that's been done. That reference said 14-97%, it was in a 2002 report, it wouldn't surprise me if the report is based on numbers taken in earlier years possibly just after the marine preserves were actually established in 2000, it doesn't mention the baseline year they used as a comparison to achieve those numbers.

The USCRTF paper is just a few years old (sent to me by one of it's authors as the most recent data available). Notice that it mentions that some species are down by 97%. That was reported in 2008. The 2002 study showed the highest decline as 75%. The trend continues.

Many aquarium collectors lie to protect their interests. They claim they stopped collecting cleaner wrasses years ago. See the proof in the state collection reports below. Keep in mind that the true catch is at least half again as much and may be 5 times more (according to Polhemus, Tissot, Walsh, etc...).

RGBMatt claims that Moorish Idols "do just fine" even though Fenner himself lists cleaner wrasses and Moorish Idols as "heinous examples" of fish that should not be taken for the trade.

RGBMatt also claims that they don't break apart the substrate to get the 50,000+ feather duster worms collected every year. You're a diver - when have you ever seen a feather duster worm lying on the bottom, not encrusted in the substrate. Even the DLNR acknowledges that the trade is breaking the law with these and other practices. They write that aquarium collecting has major impacts on the reefs.

See for yourselves. Millions of our reef animals taken to be used as disposable ornaments in mainland homes, offices and restaurants.

It is outrageous.

State Collection reports prepared by DLNR statisticians:
View attachment Hawaii Aquarium Harvests 2000_07 (2).xls
View attachment Aquarium Harvests Oahu 2000_07.xls

 

[Shaka Doug]

So I guess it's time to make marine aquarium keeping politically incorrect. It's a shame. Now we have digital fish tanks for our computer screens. That's all there's gonna be one day. What are we doing to our planet? I stopped keeping a marine tank many years ago because of the fish that would end up dieing on me. It seemed like such a hypocritical thing to have the tank because I loved the fish but they would eventually die in it. It was pretty much a guarantee that sooner or later they'd become floaters. Now I keep goldfish that I 'rescued' from the feeder-fish tank at WalMart. They seem to be 'happy' in their new home and they do get to watch cable.....lesser of two evils perhaps?

 

[friscuba]

The USCRTF paper is just a few years old (sent to me by one of it's authors as the most recent data available). Notice that it mentions that some species are down by 97%. That was reported in 2008. The 2002 study showed the highest decline as 75%. The trend continues.

QUOTE]

It says right on the coral trade info sheet you linked, the 14-97% results were from a report in 2002. There is no specific date in 2002 listed, but for the results to be printed up in 2002, the counting would have had to have been done prior to the date the report was written. The FRA system in West Hawaii was not established 'til Jan 1st, 2000, so at most there was <3 years to collect the data, and all data collected since was not involved in reaching those figures. IT'S OLD DATA that you are posting, the fact that it's mentioned on a sheet put together in 2008 doesn't mean it's current, or the most recent data available, as studies and counts have been ongoing for years. The recent studies I'm seeing here for the most part paint an improving picture.

 

[rgbmatt]

Was hoping to take the high road and ignore this flame war, but now since somebody is making claims about me personally I can't really avoid it.

Many aquarium collectors lie to protect their interests.

So is this trying to justify making false claims? Not cool. I do not have an ethical problem with keeping fish as pets as long as they're treated well, but I do think there's something wrong with misleading people. Especially when it's a disingenuous effort to take away the livelihoods from ordinary working families. We're human beings, you know.

RGBMatt claims that Moorish Idols "do just fine" even though Fenner himself lists cleaner wrasses and Moorish Idols as "heinous examples" of fish that should not be taken for the trade.

I have never said "moorish idols do just fine". If this person heard that, it was somebody else who said it. Again, not cool.

For those who don't know, Moorish Idols (and cleaner wrasse) are difficult fish to keep. Some aquarists (a small minority) are able to keep them in good health, however, and I know some personally who have kept them for years. If were asked, that would be my response.

If you look at the catch data, some moorish idols are caught but it's a very small percentage of the whole - about half of one percent. This probably reflects the percentage of aquarists who are dedicated enough to keep them. There is little demand for fish that do poorly in captivity; aquarists do not view fish as "disposable ornaments" but as pets, and are not likely to buy something that can't survive just because it's pretty.

RGBMatt also claims that they don't break apart the substrate to get the 50,000+ feather duster worms collected every year.

Although I do not know where/when I claimed this, it is true. Feather dusters do live in coral, but they also live on rocks, rubble, pilings, and rubbish. The ones that we collect come from loose rocks - to collect them you pick up the rock, peel the worm off the bottom, and put the rock back. There is no need to break coral to pick feather dusters, and the guys I know who provide the bulk of the catch are very responsible divers. Breaking coral to get dusters out is illegal, and they aren't willing to risk their livelihoods by destroying their own resource and risking prosecution.

Keep in mind that the true catch is at least half again as much and may be 5 times more (according to Polhemus, Tissot, Walsh, etc...).

These sources have not claimed that the fishery is 5 times unreported. This is not reflected in any of the Tissot/Walsh/Williams papers. Upon asking Dan Polhemus (head of DAR) if this was true, his response was:

"The quote attributed to me in regard to the amount of catch under-reporting in the aquarium fishery is incorrect. I have consistently said that I would be surprised if undocumented catch was even equivalent to the legally reported catch, much less 5X more."