I understand your sentiment and am sympathetic to your vision. I was the broodstock manager at Proaquatix and have worked with Bill, Arlene, and Katy (the Addisons) at C-Quest. Certainly one extreme is a hobbyist's choice in strictly captive bred. However, there are fish that are abundant such as Royal Grammas, Chromis, shrimps etc... and there are fish caught from areas with effective management through regulations and meaningful enforcement (eg Hawaii, Florida)... and then the other extreme are fish caught with destructive practices, no regulations, or regulations without enforcement... or species that have no reasonableness as pets (eg some diet-specific inverts like starfishes or slugs, butterflies etc). So there's every shade of gray in between these scenarios, and then there's the reality of the market and aquaculture. Costs are high in operations, many species are not economically feasible, bulk of hobbyists have a certain threshold of willingness to pay, and then there's what people want. For example, we'd never have tank raised turbo snails or blue legged hermits due to abundance of cheap wild specimens, but most tanks will want/need them. Realistically, we'd likely always have hobbyists wanting pygmy angels and tangs... it's just what people want.
So in between, there's lots of variations. Just as some folks will choose to be vegan for moral reasons, bulk of consumers are naturally omnivorous.
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08-06-2012, 11:27 PM
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