Impact of our Hobby

So I have been working on a research paper for my class and found it kind of depressing how much of a negative impact our hobby has had of reefs, I know that it has gotten better than it used to be but that is not saying much. I was wondering what do you guys do to lessen the impact or help conservation efforts?

 

I only buy/trade captive bread coral and fish. And use aqua cultured LR.

 

Yea, that is what I try to do, it is just hard some times because the limited types of captive bread fish that are for sale.

 

The impact blame that is directed at collecting for the trade is a load of rubbish; well here in Auz any way!
There are so many ways to minimise the affects of human’s physical impact on the reefs and most of them are in play these days.
The problems are the environmental affects upon the ocean from our numbers and nothing else is at fault!!!!!
If a section of reef is smashed “literally” these frags will make the reef bigger and more diverse, I have seen this so times from storms and cyclones from when I first started diving in 69 and still to this day, which makes this statement so painfully true!
If you break it, it will grow back, if you pollute it, there is no more chances for the life that was there previously.
Ocean temps, salinity, co2 acidity and sediment are our fault and these are getting worse and will not stop until we learn to control our numbers.
While society tip toes around silly solutions like recycling and prevention of using the ocean, then oceans quality will become worse and worse until our current body shape and mindset combined with our instincts is gone!
When religions and mindless groups tell us each birth is a gift and the primitive instincts that we are carrying still from our past evolution, that supposedly did not happen and the life here now is fruitless due to a supposed after life that condemns others that follow to a disgusting planet once covered in natural beauty,then there is no hope!
Look at it all logically!
Just in the last century we and I mean we, took a third of the earths oxygen out of the equation and the creatures that control most of our the emitted co2 and makes most of our oxygen, being mainly phytoplankton, we have killed off a third of them obviously as well and the amount of land clearing to grow food for this mass of humans, then combine this with each generation relatively excepting what’s here in their time, how easy it to figure out what is happening and what is making it happen, our numbers out put impacting on the air, land and sea and nothing else can possibly be blamed.
Some say global warming as just one impact from our umbers isn’t there or is no big deal or it is finished and there is another problem, the head in the sand syndrome or its just not good business to admit its there and around here its so obvious yet no one really mentions it.
Our ocean has gained 4 degrees of its winter lowest temperature in the last 15 years and our incredibly valuable thermo clines are becoming rarer, so its all changed out off here with types of life and deaths from environmental issues.
Any way the hobby has near nothing to do with any problems with the reefs and fish stocks with a little control directed as it is there now, the actual issues that are taking its toll on our oceans ever so slowly from as far back just over 300 hundred years ago, will never be dealt with because of this thread and similar.

 

I agree that the pollution that we have caused is having a major impact but you can not really say that the trade has no effect at all. If you look at the research you will find fact based evidence about it. There is no way that you can remove fish and inverts from a reef in large numbers and not have it impact the ecosystem. This does not just include loss of biodiversity due to over fishing but also invasive species that have been introduced as a side effect.

 

When I say pollution I do not mean just pollution in the terms most respond to.

I got my dive ticket in 69 and an adult ticket later on and have been part of spearing, surfing, collecting and still do, near as much as I did back then, though I scuba not quite as much as free diving these days for the cardio health benefits of aggressive free diving.

During these, what would I class as privileged years of oceanic activities, I have seen many instances of species imbalances that I have experimented with and helped remove that we have caused and on the surface if I were like most others I may agree with you, but I realise and I am seriously concerned of the big picture and not the insignificant ones that most waste theirs and natures limited time on.

There are so many easy ways to protect reefs and the invaluable planktonic dispersal that is so important here on the east coast of Auz as it is I suspect in most areas around the world.
Sadly as usual very little that will do any real good is put in place as most old and semi new school marine biologists and ichthyologists I speak to agree with.
If I didn’t value the oceans beauty so much, this as with so many things would not annoy me so much.
This just one of many idiotic examples, the gov here wanted a survey on our grey nurse shark numbers and their condition and gave this team two weeks to come up with this report.
They found two and one with a hook hanging out of its mouth, so the report read, seriously endangered and a fifty percent death rate from over fishing???
The grey nurse is in such great numbers out off here they near run into you while diving, you turn to quick and one may knock your mask off as you bump into it.
In 1980 while still enjoying hunting fish and crays while spear fishing amongst as just one of my many ocean activities, I joined in with something I felt strongly about due to already extensive experience.
That being petitioning and lobbying which included walking the streets and shops to get signatures to save our reefs and hopefully help make others aware that the Great Barrier Reef is at risk and in massive areas it will go down very soon!

I collect, I hunt marine life, yet I have always loved and valued the ocean and I have always felt a great respect for it and feel in aw of the fact that with out its oceanic primitive cyano bacteria relatives, complex life as we are, would not exist!

We owe everything to it yet we are crowding its once grandeur into the toilet.

That time of pushing for change to try and save our barrier reef that with help from the east auzy current, it populates our east coast with billions of tons of life via planktonic dispersal, this was all a waste of time and energy and last year it was disclosed by the great barrier reef marine park authority that between 1980 and now we have lost 50 percent of our great barrier reefs invaluable habitats as in corals, not collected, they died there!

The surveys and the idiotic things the governments puts in place to shut up the no nothing minions and the short term sports divers to get votes, because they have no real idea of much anything, makes it all quiet disturbing.

I read once that they surmise that the first dominant species on our planet was a flat worm, I am sure they did a far better job and caused less adverse impact in their time compared to what we are doing

With in just my east auz waters, possibly by the end of my life I will most likely hear that as much as 80 percent of our great barrier reef died where it lived and was most certainly not collected or squashed by an anchor!

This reef has very few grey nurse in comparison to other reefs here in SEQ and as you can see they are rare,lol.

 

Ok,well I can see that you are not going to even look at the peer reviewed research papers that are out there so there is no point it even talking about this anymore.

 

You do realize that if it wasn't for us in the hobby that some of the corals would be long gone? So as a long time member of this forum I have seen people come and go blasting us for keeping coral. So this is all I will say about this thread.

 

Ok ,when did I say all our hobby does is negative? I know that our hobby has done a number of great things for the reefs but it also has a negative aspect of it. I mean it's not like there are peer reviewed research papers on the subject or anything.

 

we all love the hobby. mcr and pkc explain it perfectly. thanks for the pictures pkc!

 

I couldn’t agree more!
A joking term that I use to make quite regularly about the oceans inevitable out comes was that in time reef aquarium hobbyists would have the only live corals!
This is from their hard work and fraging that they may have to pass on the only corals of certain species left in existence or will have found ways to retain at least some species that will find it hard to exist in the wild in such acidic conditions and altering temperatures.
Two facts of many that are happening as we type, poor little nemo and his relatives after their birth are loosing the ability to seek out host anemones from our co2 acidic affects upon the amphiprions as are corals becoming unable to utilize calcium carbonate as a result of the co2 acidity.
Just from these two we have juvenile amphiprions that are evolved damsels having to go back to living a non-symbiotic life as a basic damsel once again, that wont happen so they die.
Then many areas corals will not be able to make its calcium skeleton any more and go back to being an anemone they evolved from to live with out calcium building symbiotic algae, that won’t happen so some species will disappear.
The world will go on, nothing except a large chunk of another world that may affect our world’s position in relation to the sun and rotation keeping the water here, will ever interfere with long term picture.
My concern with all this is that I would have liked that when I am gone; others with the oceans would be doing what I have, been in aw of and seen what I have.
With reasonable laws put in place, our hobby has absolutely nothing to do with any negative affects upon numbers of any marine species.
The affects from our incredibly massive numbers resulting in varied out puts and our alterations to the land are where it begins and ends, for a lot of species we should have shared the available space with.
Any way, nothing will ever be done about these issues, that’s in most peoples nature and in the distant future once we look nothing like we do now, the world will still hopefully keep its axes and distance from the sun for those generations!