From an ecological point of view we are all responsible for the destruction of the worlds reefs. From an ethical/moral point a view, those of us who take the effort to buy and source captive bred corals and fish or buying from other hobbyists are doing only slightly less damage then those of us who do not. But its a step in the right direction. Im not perfect I know that some of my coral is captive and some is not. However if you were to put two frags in front of me - one captive the other wild. I would take the captive, because it is now the 2nd or later generation of one wild harvested coral. With that in mind we now have to weigh the difference between wild reproduction witch is undoubtably - on a healthy reef, exponentially larger then we can achieve in our tanks, and fragging one wild coral over and over at a slower rate. Which do you place more priority on? Giving the reefs a chance to recover while fragging what we have or pulling more to furnish our tanks with. Fish are an entirely different story, until we can perfect captive breeding the ocean will have to do our work, we now need to keep our fatality rate to a minimum.
It is a fine line but one that we all must draw on our own moral code.
I would like to show my kids the beauty of a coral reef one day, that is not in my living room. If we are not carful that might not be a possibility 20 years from now.
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