Not My Fault Mentality

[mkirda]

deleted

 

[clarionreef]

Kuke,
I know specific places of direct and general reef destruction by our trade and no other.
And not in the easy to show places like S.E.Asia.
I could reveal more with a click of the mouse. Does anywant want to see it? Do you? Or is it just you?
Then again...its true. Then again it makes the trade look bad....Then again it is bad....then again we must reveal it in order to try and stop it....then again....
The fact that this is a 20 year old conversation doesn't make it irrelevant.
20 years ago those areas I speak of were just loaded with flame hawks. Now nary a one.
The point here? Playing Hamlet for real w/ the issues that need fixing or just playing games w/ a few/ too much time on their hands.
A plurality of interest makes this conversation worthwhile. A lack of interest....not.
Mike, I envy your restraint. And now I will follow your example and stop.
Steve

 

[Kalkbreath]

Thats not the point.......even message boards that have Area 57,UFO and aliens as the subject matter ....... talk about actual sightings or sighting other people have had ......What sightings have our hobbyists seen? Zero! Just because a life long collector knows of a few areas in which there has been over collection of a few target species .........does not explain why thousands of hobbyists speak of hobby reef destruction like is common knowledge. Missing flame hawks does not a destroyed reef make. {also, flame hawks are quite uncommon in most areas} Show me one reef destroyed by the hobby coral collection industry or by the over collection of flame hawks . Dont just insinuate that there are hundreds ........Thats how our hobby got in this state of dissolution.

 

[clarionreef]

Kalk,
All commercial collectors know this stuff. They know what they've done, they know where they've been. How many post on the boards? None.
Why boast of the damage one does? Few have computer access. Most speak no English.
You have however proven to my satisfaction that most hobbyists live far away from the scenes of the crimes. If they were closer...I am afraid we would be inundated with coralreef destruction slides.
Critical species that have become scarce in so many areas have become scarce for no reason???
If there has been no compromise of critical habitat, then the blue tangs, the imperators and bluefaces would still be nearby! If the trade has not sabatoged its own pantry, why then does it travel still futher and futher away to come up with the same numbers?
To spend extra gasoline and transit time for no reason?
Comon now...don't be silly.
Steve

 

[dizzy]

Thats not the point.......even message boards that have Area 57,UFO and aliens as the subject matter

Jeff FYI it's Area 51 like Steve used earlier. You must be thinking of Heinz 57. :wink:

 

[Kalkbreath]

Kalk,
All commercial collectors know this stuff. They know what they've done, they know where they've been. How many post on the boards? None.
Why boast of the damage one does? Few have computer access. Most speak no English.
You have however proven to my satisfaction that most hobbyists live far away from the scenes of the crimes. If they were closer...I am afraid we would be inundated with coralreef destruction slides.
Critical species that have become scarce in so many areas have become scarce for no reason???
If there has been no compromise of critical habitat, then the blue tangs, the imperators and bluefaces would still be nearby! If the trade has not sabatoged its own pantry, why then does it travel still futher and futher away to come up with the same numbers?
To spend extra gasoline and transit time for no reason?
Comon now...don't be silly.
Steve

Tell me one coral that has become scarce due to over collection on any reef anywhere? {PS..super neon green is not a species}

 

[Kalkbreath]

Thats not the point.......even message boards that have Area 57,UFO and aliens as the subject matter

Jeff FYI it's Area 51 like Steve used earlier. You must be thinking of Heinz 57. :wink:

OKEY ....ya gots me! But actually I got you ..... You just illustrated my point! You can site{BY NAME} more places on the planet which has had fying saucers land .......then reefs die from collection of coral. :wink:

 

[zbt]

Cortez,
To help the doubters could you post pics of the places you have been to that show destruction of reefs due to the aquarium trade? I think showing the real sites, rather than debating numbers, would go a long way to convincing folks and getting more on the reform bandwagon. Otherwise, if the pics are not shown then it becomes this endless, year after year of the same old thing, debate of... yes the industry leads to destruction... or no it does not, and nothing is accomplished except battle lines drawn by posters on this forum and no real action gets done if in fact it is needed.

 

[mkirda]

Cortez,
To help the doubters could you post pics of the places you have been to that show destruction of reefs due to the aquarium trade? I think showing the real sites, rather than debating numbers, would go a long way to convincing folks and getting more on the reform bandwagon. Otherwise, if the pics are not shown then it becomes this endless, year after year of the same old thing, debate of... yes the industry leads to destruction... or no it does not, and nothing is accomplished except battle lines drawn by posters on this forum and no real action gets done if in fact it is needed.

ZBT,

{sigh} Do you even know what it is you ask for?

Steve is a commercial dive collector, NOT a photographer.

As a recreational diver and amateur u/w photographer, I pay a lot of money to go places to be able to dive and photograph. All the normal diver operators are in places where there are still reefs to see. To go diving on reefs where cyanide fishing and/or blast fishing takes place requires that you go outside the normal dive tourist operators. You pay mucho dinero to rent equipment, then pay mucho dinero to CHARTER a boat to take you to these places. Instead of a $20 outing in a place like the Philippines, you are talking about quite a bit more, like closer to 10x. And I'm paying this because I want to go see dead reefs? Sorry, but I don't get to dive all that often, and I'm not entirely sure that I want to take a couple of days out of my precious vacation time to go view dead reefs and take photos of them.

(Besides, would you want to go diving where active blast fishing is taking place? I have one perforated eardrum already, I sure don't want to damage my other ear...)

Last time I did this, I found and posted pictures for Kalkbreath that showed dead sections of corals that were most likely from cyanide.
At the time, Kalk claimed that these were not from cyanide, but that the bleaching was most likely due to 'eel rubbings'.

Maybe next time I go, I will do just this- Charter a boat, go dive dead reefs, and take a few rolls of film of dead corals. I'm sure that, when I do, Kalk will come up with something. 'this was only one reef, why didn't you dive more?' or 'you when diving X days and you only got Y images?' or some such self-rationalizations to make the evidence go away.

Like I said, I'll probably do it anyway next time I go- But I honestly don't expect it to do a lot of good.
Some people cannot be convinced despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[jamesw]

Mike,

Just take a photo of a reef with no fish on it - that should do the trick.

Interesting thread - what made you decide to go "back to the future" and bring this one back Steve? It's good to see because it shows how the mentality of some of the posters here has changed over the past couple of years.

Many who used to "want to try to help" have now gone to "I just want to mind my own business" or even done 180 degree swings.

Cheers
James

 

[zbt]

Mike,
Its too much trouble to show pics of the dead reefs?? With all due respect, that makes no sense at all. It IS worth everyones time to come on this forum over the years saying the hobby is responsible for a great amount of reef destruction, talking ad infinitum, yet showing a couple of pics to prove the point is too much trouble?? Then why bother wasting your time coming on here endlessly saying the same stuff and battling with folks that disagree? Is it really for the sake of the reefs or just to have someone to argue with?? And you want folks to take all this seriously when it is just talk and jumbled, variably interpreted numbers. I have never been to these places and likely never will be able to go, so show the pics and prove the points made here daily and then you end much of the opposition and get more folks to help.

 

[mkirda]

Mike,
Its too much trouble to show pics of the dead reefs?? With all due respect, that makes no sense at all. It IS worth everyones time to come on this forum over the years saying the hobby is responsible for a great amount of reef destruction, talking ad infinitum, yet showing a couple of pics to prove the point is too much trouble?? Then why bother wasting your time coming on here endlessly saying the same stuff and battling with folks that disagree? Is it really for the sake of the reefs or just to have someone to argue with?? And you want folks to take all this seriously when it is just talk and jumbled, variably interpreted numbers. I have never been to these places and likely never will be able to go, so show the pics and prove the points made here daily and then you end much of the opposition and get more folks to help.

zbt,

With all due respect, why should I have to spend my hard-earned money and my precious vacation time to provide anyone with evidence that they can find if the just visited www.google.com, entered in 'photos of reef destruction' and hit enter? I mean if people are interested, they can find the photos that are out there freely available on the web which show beyond any reasonable doubt that algae-covered rocks (aka Dead Reef) with few fish do exist.

That being said, next time I do go to the Philippines, I probably will seek out areas and do exactly this. I'm unsure what it will prove though, besides the fact that I am an idiot for going out to photograph dead reefs.

James, Does Advanced Aquarist want to publish an article on 'Dead Reefs of the Philippines' sometime next year? (Maybe I can re-coup some of my costs. :lol: :lol: :lol: )

It is probably clear to everyone that I am crabby and conflicted on this one... Why go when there is nothing to photograph? But that is the point, to photograph the fact that there is nothing worth photographing... I guess if I get a single comment out of James like... Hmm... Nicely composed algae-covered rocks! it is all worth it. :wink:

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[clarionreef]

Guys,
All ya gotta do is go to Pagbilao, Quezon just a few hours from Manila.
Swim for 20 miles in any direction and see if you can find any LIVE coral.
Dead coral is the entire underwater landscape there now. This was the center of the aquarium trade for 20 odd years. After killing off their own region they became long range raiders of other peoples reefs.
Now, thanks to local governments kicking them out everywhere they go...they have pretty much slipped from the scene. Poetic justice in a way. Especially after the million plus corals they squirted with cyanide.
The challenge is not to find DEAD coral in the Philippines where our trade has been. The challenge is to find LIVE coral. Its not easy. No place in the world can you swim so far and find nothing to look at!
Steve

 

[PeterIMA]

Deja Vu, I read "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" in 1979 (in FAMA). I compiled a lot of literature and wrote my first cyanide article with Dr. Pratt in 1984. In 1985, Steve Robinson, Vaughan Pratt and myself formed the Intenational Marinelife Alliance (IMA). In 1986 the three of us along with Dr. Don McAllister visited the Philippines, presented papers at a conference, interviewed exporters, and dove on the reefs off of Santiago Island (near Bolinao). What I saw and photographed were heavily degraded reefs pocked with holes from blast fishing and laid bare with cyanide. I published four articles in 1987 in Marine Fish Monthly. One article about our visit to Bolinao included photos of the reefs as just described. I was there I saw it for myself. It was worse than Steve has described. Then, for the past 20 years the IMA begged hobbyists and the trade to get involved and put their money behind net training and cyanide testing (among other proposals that were turned down by the Pet Industry Joint Advisor Council-PIJAC). PIJAC had its own fact-finding mission later in 1986 that developed the "its not us its someone else arguments" in an attempt to whitewash and sweep the issues under the rug. One fat lawyer has sytmied most attempts by the industry and hobbyists for reform. The problem did not go away. During the early 1990s, I continued to read articles by others (not the IMA or Robinson) that described exactly the same cycle of cyanide use, reef destructrion, and depletion of fishes in Indonesia (that had been amply documented in aquarium magazines in the 1980s by myself, Steve Robinson, and many others). Dr. Bob Johannes a few years ago expressed surprise when I told him he had plagerized my publications in the TNC report published in 1995. But, he was successful in raising concern about a real problem. James Cervino did his research both in the field and in the laboratory. Cyanide use kills corals-Cervino proved it with a grant from the IMA (published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin during 2003). Yet, after 20 years, a bunch of arm chair industry types have the nerve to say there is no photographic evidence. Just to prove you guys are wrong, you can expect to see photographic proof posted on the IMA website in the next month or two. There already is lots to read there about live rock depletion of habitats in Fiji, cyanide testing results, cyanide out of control in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam. I suggest that you guys get your heads out of the sand and go to the IMA website at http://www.marine.org

Sincererly,
Peter Rubec, Ph.D.
Founder of IMA along with Steve Robinson, and Dr. Vaughan Pratt

 

[Anonymous]

Its too much trouble to show pics of the dead reefs?? With all due respect, that makes no sense at all.

Whats so hard to understand that Steve is a collector/trainer and Mike is a amatuar u/w photographer? Do you think they're both sitting on reef destruction photos and AREN'T putting them out? Steve has a few of them, and guess what, they're all on the web for you to see. Mike had a few, and again, guess what, they're on the web for you to see as well. BTW, Steve doesn't even own a u/w camarea so HOW COULD HE EVEN TAKE SUCH PHOTO'S FOR YOU TO SEE?

 

[Reefer High]

Sorry i don not have time to read all of these post because i have aclass in 10 mins. But i am an employee at atlantis aquariums in jax and i have first have knowledge from a collector that stayed in guam and many other pacific islands. I know there are many sides to this but most live rock is taken from lagoons in waist deep water. This rubble is collected after storms puss the rock to the lagoons. This free's many areas for new growth and spawning of new fish. I also wanted to point out the study done off the coast of australia. They were begining to expieriance reef die off in the mid 80's i believe, which lead them to start prunning back the reef. In turn they have found better growth and faster growth than ever. I know this may not ring true everywhere, and i can't say that when they collect they actually help the reef, but we need to look at both sides of the story.
I believe in the next 5 years there are going to be no importing of corals out of the south pacific, with the exception of some of the poorest of the poor countries. So if you want to start your own aquacultured business nows the time

 

[Kalkbreath]

Welcome Reefer high.....Whch school do you attend? Sandlewood?................I like your store! Was that show tank from the old Arlington aquarium? ......... . Steve, can you even begin to explain how over collection of aquarium fish has kill a reef?Even a cyanide bottle becomes incrusted with pink coraline and corals in just a few months if it was dropped in health waters. Why does a reef killed off by Lava ....with in a year become reclaimed by the corals in Hawaii? Green reefs are not from Cyanide or lava......its from runoff and excess nutrients. How can the collection of corals for the trade kill a reef? Ninety-eight percent of the coral on any reef is uncollectible too big or brown and not resalable. For instance, even if coral collection was allowed in the Florida keys .......there would be zero market. its all brown Even Gorgonian collection being allowed does not mean the collectors collect enough to harm the ecosystem........... likewise for Hawaii.......there is very little coral which would be marketable if collection took place in Hawaii. The only reason some people have tried to smuggle live rock off of Hawaii is because the freight is soo cheap. compared to deep indo Pacific.. There is a self limiting aspect to coral collection .......only about 2% is marketable even from coral rich areas like Tonga and Fiji . There has never been a reef harmed by the live coral trade. Perhaps a bit fewer super neon colored corals .....but never enough to denude a reef and compromise its heath. Even tropical storms naturally remove a thousand times more coral the the hobby does ......Yet these typhoon victims have no trouble recovering?.....The vary reason Tonga And Fiji have so much live rock is these natural storms. Lastly CITES is the second reason its impossible to remove enough coral to harm any reefs health. I find it really silly that the collection of wild corals is always the first issue in which reeform is suggested .....when not only is the collection of wild corals already intensely regulated .......but it has the least impact on the reefs and the best incentive for the protection of the live coral ? It makes far greater sense to end fish collection then coral collection. There are no collectors using cyanide to collect coral. There is no real accounting talking place with fish collection .....but each and every coral is acounted for one by one . Why is it that this hobby is almost always completely off base?

 

[PeterIMA]

Kalk, I partly agree with you. The study conducted by IMA along with Bishop Museaum staff and biologists from Fiji found that there was evidence that the removal of coral rock for construction, dry coral for the curio trade, and live rock for the aquarium trade were having detrimental effects on the reefs in the communities involved in these types of live rock harvest in Fiji. By contrast, there was very little harmful effect that could be documented from the collection of live corals for export to the aquarium trade. Further studies are needed, but it seems that live coral harvest, coral farming, and live rock aquaculture (artificial rock placed on reefs), may be more economically beneficial to the villages in Fiji than the removal of natural live rock for construction, and the aquarium trade. Some regulation of the harvest of live rock in Fiji may be necessary to control destructive harvesting practices and protect coral reef communities.

Peter

 

[clarionreef]

Kalk,
You're kidding right?
The daily application by a few dozen divers working locally 200 days a year kills, ruins and lays waste to the reefs they work. Like mowing the lawn every day and never allowing the grass to grow strong again.
Cyanide fishing is not an event. Its a routine...a daily routine that produces cumalitive damage and sabatoge of the most critical coral habitat...especially large coral cover that is so important to the fish.
Surely this is not beyond understanding.

I didn't read this stuff. I lived with cyanide fisherman and they showed me, taught me and convinced me. Not for a week...or even the famous two week junkets we hear of....but three years.

I'm sorry its true. Its gotta be fixed by training the divers and supplying the right nets. Its not that hard to do....given know-how and a will to do it.
Steve

 

[Kalkbreath]

Kalk,
You're kidding right?
The daily application by a few dozen divers working locally 200 days a year kills, ruins and lays waste to the reefs they work. Like mowing the lawn every day and never allowing the grass to grow strong again.
Cyanide fishing is not an event. Its a routine...a daily routine that produces cumalitive damage and sabatoge of the most critical coral habitat...especially large coral cover that is so important to the fish.
Surely this is not beyond understanding.

I didn't read this stuff. I lived with cyanide fisherman and they showed me, taught me and convinced me. Not for a week...or even the famous two week junkets we hear of....but three years.

I'm sorry its true. Its gotta be fixed by training the divers and supplying the right nets. Its not that hard to do....given know-how and a will to do it.
Steve

so you agree that the reeformers you resurrected have it backwards.........it is fish collection that needs to end ........ not coral collection. Then why does it seem that every good intentioned hobbyist and even "experts" gravitate to the idea that the government will soon shut down wild coral collection? The government ending fish collection is almost never included in reeform chit chat...........how did we as a hobby get so dissolution and ass backwards?