Data: Wrong; Sustainability: Don't care; Robert Wintner: Aquarium trade should stop!

[mrhasan]

Originally Posted by naesco

Than God for the environmentalists in Hawaii Indonesia and the Philippines and other countries that provide fish coral and inverts for our hobby

Theses are the gals/guys who:

1. Lobby their governments against the use of cyanide and dynamite that destroys the reefs and the critters that live therein.
2. Lobby to set up marine parks to preserve breeding areas for the critters we keep. Only a dumber than dumb reefer would suggest that national parks in Canada are bad.
3. Pressure the marine industry to stop the import of impossible to keep species and very difficult to keep fish like cleaner wrasse that provide a vital cleaning job on he fish in the oceans.
4. Are the leaders in Cites and worldwide endangers precise listings.
5 pressure the government to prohibit the wholesale mining of the reef for live rock
6. Demonstrate against mining, manufacturing and oil industries to pressure them to lower water pollution so that the reefs do not die from pollution and silt infiltration

And the list goes on.

Imagine what would happen in these countries without their good work

Those are obviously good works. And they are termed as "regulation" while this guy, in his campaign, is not promoting "regulation" but instead making a path for black market by saying "legal trade is immoral". Our human nature is such that the forbidden fruit is always the tastiest and put a ban on the marine hobby and the industry will find a way that is not regulated or anything - which can be the worst nightmare for the hobbyist as well as the nature. There's a huge difference between people who create/works with regulations and policy and treehugger who write "save trees" on pieces of papers.