Nobody is keeping people at collection sites all the time, they might visit once a year.

I'm curious about what you consider a "major" retailer as well. Some of the places that people think of as big are nothing more than fax machines that send orders to large wholesalers. The wholesale outfit drop ships directly to the customer, the retail op never even sees your livestock.

Uhhhh...how exactly have can you say "nobody"?

I was speaking of a specific retailer who I KNOW has at least one collector in the Solomon Islands that I know of (met) and I believe more. He is there year round. I also am pretty sure they have more than a fax machine :wink:

What's the name of the shop?

Wikipedia - Cyanide Fishing
 

Here is how Cyanide fishing works and it's impact for those who are interested.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide_fishing

Naesco,

The Mandarins I used to buy were not caught with cyanide, they were speared. Next time your retailer gets a bunch shipped in have a closer look, might see a scar along the dorsal or caudal.

Greenspotted,

Don't you mean Vanuatu?

Yes I posted on this technique earlier. MAC taught it to the fisherman.
But, as we both know, the availability of MAC fish is very limited.

Reefers should gladly pay the additional cost for these mandarins.
Continue to get them in whenever possible.

Vanuatu? Are you talking about the collector I met?

If so, I met him in Singapore (where my father lives) at a local reef club. He had brought them some hand picked fishes, some of which my dad bought. Im talking some multi thousand dollar specimens, so he delivered them himself (Singapore is MADE of money ;) ). I talked to him for a while and learned he works for one of the largest retailers (mostly online but they have huge facilities on both the West and East coast US, so actually they are probably not "mostly" online) but lives in the South Pacific. He is actually employed by that US company though and if you look at their rare fish and the amazing specimens they get, it makes sense now. He said he had just come from the Solomon Islands collecting some very rare puffer color morphs that he had only ever seen maybe 7 ever in his life. He had one at the reef club that day along with the angels and whatnot he had imported.

So I guess I should have said he collects in the Solomon Islands at least seasonally but I don't know for sure if he lives there. He just said he works for a US retailer but lives year round in the South Pacific. My father has gotten almost all his fish through the guy now.

So there are no MAC wholesalers though here in Canada? What about the US?

I don't know much about it, but if I ever found a retailer/wholesaler who was buying/selling MAC fish, I would shop exclusively with them :)

There is one MAC certified wholesaler in canada (right here in BC) but no certified retailers

Do they sell to the public?

Not to public, check with lfs to see if they deal with coast mountain. They should be able to let you know what certified stock is available.

Thanks, I will do that for sure. I think my new LFS will be whichever one is willing to deal with them. :)

some shops also import from MAC certified wholesalers out of the US (theres lots in LA) The only thing is that there is a limited number of species that MAC certifies.

So there is a MAC certified importer here in Richmond (suburb of Vancouver for those of you who are from other provinces) but I have no idea yet where he sends his fish...I have emailed asking for a retailer.

I would assume he distributes them throughout Canada but I have yet to find a retailer here in town that does buy MAC certified fish :( I am guessing they cost a bit more and most LFS are not willing/caring enough to spend the money. I would love to be able to walk into the shops and see MAC certified tanks. I can understand not devoting an entire store to them but a few tanks would be nice.

Heres an interesting question then...

Forget price for now. If you had the choice to buy MAC fish (humanely caught with certification) but had to limit the species you kept OR buy any species usually available but were taking a chance the fish may be inhumanely caught, which would you buy?

For me its an easy decision. I would have no problem limiting what species I kept if I knew it was for the good of the fish/ocean.

im with you on this one as well. some species just don't belong in the hobby. simple as that, live with it.

Oh I can live with it :D

The problem is, people want what they want and we live in a society where we get what we want.

After reading the MAC site, I have to say I am very disappointed that more retailers are not willing to bring in MAC fish. Its a great program and you would think in a country like Canada, it would be used much more.

Oh and for those of you saying certified cyanide free fish are not possible, read the site.

http://www.aquariumcouncil.org/index.html

No its not perfect but its a start and a pretty darn good chance these fish have never come in contact with cyanide or any inhumane collecting. They are tracked the entire way.

The thing is stores can't market fish as MAC Certified unless they are certified themselves. Our local store has brought in (for stock) and will special order MAC fish. Many stores have looked into the certification, but found the whole thing was a little hokey, costly(for smaller stores or a few tanks), and to much of a hassel(constant endless paperwork). MAC has a good thing going but they need to streamline the whole process along the whole supply line. I know of several exporters that have given up on MAC due to inconsistancies in their policies and process. They still maintain MAC's values and hope to re-establish certification once MAC gets their act together.

I'd pay double if it was certified AND it came with a 15 day (or whatever) guarantee. The certification by itself will not be enough for me to pay double... if the fish dies, I can't perform a necropsy to confirm so I could be scammed. And not neccesarrily by the retailer, but the supplier or others in the supply chain.

I would rather see less species available and have those species humanly caught and with as little environmental damage as possible, then have a huge selection that were caught in questionable ways.

If we stop buying fish that don't belong in captivity, eventually the demand will fall and collection will ease.

If the hobby doesn't police itself, the politicians will eventually and well we know what happens when politicians become involved with things.

I think that is kind of the way its going...

I also think it will just simply end up being a matter of many fish going onto the endangered species list before the collection of them stops. May not be in my lifetime but it clearly will happen. Between overfishing, pollution, climate change and collecting, the ocean is declining fast.

The way things are now for this hobby, its not sustainable.

I've brought in lots of MAC certified fish over the years working in different shops. I've seen lists from the wholesaler you guys are talking about, they don't usually cost a lot more but there isn't a very large selection of species. I've marked the fish I've brought in as MAC certified, nobody seemed to care. I tend to agree as I didn't see much of a difference in quality.

Once you look into it further MAC is pretty much a joke anyway. They sure spent a lot of money but they haven't accomplished much more than distributing paperwork.

We buy all of our fish exclusively from a MAC certified wholesaler. And yes, there is a huge price difference between transhipped fish and our particular wholesaler. We make very little on fish because we are competing with stores that buy from transships, but we are extremely satisfied with the quality.

I'm planning on starting a thread regarding our fish supplier, the quality, my experience in the industry, and our acclimation methods when we've gathered more detailed information. But in the meantime, here's some email correspondance between us and our supplier that you may find interesting:

^^^Great to hear! Thats what Im talking about!

I like how honest he sounds. Not going to make guarantees that he he can't keep (cyanide) but this is exactly the kind of attitude I wish other wholesalers would have. No the situation would still not be perfect but its a step in the right direction. If its not done, this hobby will disappear one day. Its not sustainable how things are now (which is not just the fault of the hobby though by any means...there are much worse issues in our oceans right now).

I understand in the end its a business. My fiance is starting up a cosmetics line, so we know all about trying to make a profit and keeping costs down. BUT we are not talking about inanimate objects here...these are living creatures, not eye shadows or DVD's. You can't approach this kind of business the same.

IMO if you cannot take the time to make sure you do all you can to ensure the well being of the fish that are being sold, you should find a new career. There are plenty of business opportunities out there where you don't have to care about your product and can make more money than you would selling fish!

I applaude this wholesaler and Progressive Reef for using them! Certainly is progressive, IMO :lol:

I can say first hand that at a bare minimum I know 3 of my suppliers do NOT use chemicals in their process of fish collection or storing. I do not order from one until I have made the journey to see first hand and meet them face to face spending minumum7-10 days there watching everything. I can say this first hand as I have been to see three of them personally in their respective countries.
Finding a good supplier is hard specially when you see things in these locations you would see no where else in the world. The only way to "ensure" your collection practices/packing/keeping of these fish is to see it first hand.

As for "certified" it is simply a money grab situation as there is no policing the standards they ask for or require for MAC certification . It is nice as a thought of what it could be if carried out properly....but no one would be able to afford the livestock anymore with the extra costs associated with governing the industry to those standards and keeping people honest.

Just my opinion though.

Dan

Just a note about sustainability...

You honestly think it is aquarists that are destroying the ocean? Ever watched a shrimp boat sweep the sea clean, only to pick a couple shrimps out of the mess of sealife that ends up on the deck of the boat, and shovel all the dead and dying sealife back into the ocean? Few (if any) of the fish that sit up in the sun while they pick through the mess for the shrimp survive...

Look at how destructive fishing for orange roughy is... I mean really, orange roughy is expensive because there are so few left. Like the cod fishery on Canada's east coast, it was just not sustainable, but that doesn't stop people from eating shrimp, cod, orange roughy...

Me buying a pair of wild-caught fish probably did less damage than me eating 5 shrimp at a restaurant, in all reality. But that's just my $.02, others will undoubtedly see this differently. I just watched a TV show about shrimping the other day, and was so unimpressed with the like 5 shrimp that came out of a full net of ocean animals that I'll likely only eat shrimp on special occasions, and will likely never buy them again.

Unless I'm serving them with beluga caviar and a big bucket of sea turtle eggs.:twised:

I started this poll and expected to see 90%+ in favour of buying the "certified cyanide free" option. I was surprised by the 60/40 split and some of the responses.

It just depends which shrimp you eat. Never eat tiger prawns, for example, for the same reasons you stated. But take a gander over to Granville island market and you'll find FRESH trapped prawns. prawn traps are just like crab traps and are 100% sustainable in my mind. plus spot prawns taste 10X better than stinkin asian tiger prawns. Canadian fisheries has a lot of screw ups to fix and answer for, but not all of it is doom and gloom (just most of it :P)

my current favorite picture out of "nature". this sort of sums up shrimp trawling for me. it's a satellite image of an asian shrimp trawling fleet and the sediment they kick up (which then settles and chokes out any and all sessile life).
http://gristmill.grist.org/images/user/7/sharpless.jpg

snaz, im not too surprised. read the rest of the comments and you'll see it's a bit more complicated than the poll options allowed. plus people like their money. we are in a recession after all. for the record, i would because i know how much damage cyanide does on a reef.

edit: blueabyss, i just realised you're not from vancouver... don't know why i thought you were. well, i guess you're hooped then :)

No your totally right...I never thought of it like that before. I agree though and feel so much better now! Man I used to think I was kind of selfish but you have really changed my mind. I mean the destruction caused by the hobby that I support really doesn't matter as long as there is something even more destructive out there.

Wow this kind of thinking makes it so much easier to justify things! I think I am going to apply this to my everyday life...Long as someone out there is worse than me, I don't have to worry about my actions :evil:













Honestly, though, you should do some research and open your eyes. Some collectors are destroying the reef at an alarming rate. Cyanide kills something like a square meter of reef for every one fish caught.

Any destruction of the ocean is important to stop right now, big or small. You can't just justify it or shrug it off because someone out there is doing it worse than you.

Not what I meant at all, not at all...

I didn't mean that this hobby isn't destructive, what I meant was that we DO have to look at the bigger picture. Sure, reefs are being destroyed at an alarming rate, but probably more because of the effects of climate change, turbidity, and pollution than from the collection of fishes and other sealife for the aquarium trade. I mean, not everyone will pay as much as marine aquarists do for a single fish. What I meant was that there is destruction of all kinds on a much grander scale...

That isn't the point though. I agree with you, how can I not? Dousing reefs with cyanide to catch a fish is ridiculous, and it is in everyone's best interest to minimize that sort of destruction. HOWEVER, I also believe that we need to make other choices to minimize our impact across all ecosystems, which was sort of my point.

I didn't want to start a fight at all, if that's what it sounded like :redface: