Tang Police or Tang Nazis?

[asylumdown]

I would say that given that the aquarium trade removes about 1/1 millionth of the fish from the ocean that the commercial fishing industry does every year, and the damage we do to reefs by removing coral absolutely pales in comparison to the damage drag net fishing, or dynamite fishing, or cyanide fishing does to the reefs of the world, that the ethics of how damaging this hobby is to global ecosystems is a totally mute point if anyone here eats tuna.

Reefs in places that have something to gain from having a steady supply of healthy corals and fish to export to the aquarium trade and regulate it accordingly (Australia and Hawaii for starters) can actually benefit from an active aquarium trade. True not all places are like that, but that's why my elegance coral is Australian and not from the Philippines. Most species of fish on reefs reproduce in numbers greater than the niche market of the aquarium trade could really make a dent in, and in the cases where that's not true, it's usually the research that happens as a result of the aquarium trade that helps us find that out.

As for the ethics of keeping animals in glass boxes - that's always going to be a matter of opinion, but one would think that everyone here had to come to peace with that little conundrum by now.