Shall we act as well? - URGENT Call for Concerned Aquarists to Write O

[solasido]

Hi Guys,

I received a newsletter from CORAL magazine on this urgent issue as NOAA is going to ban SPS trade and it may impact world wide trade on SPS.

The article is here

http://hosted.vresp.com/252795/0897c9dbf0/1415012889/cb5f486cb2/

http://www.reef2rainforest.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/US-NOAA-Coral-Species-Listing-II_ALT.pdf

There is on going debate that aquarium trade contribute to coral destruction. There are valid arguments on both camps.

Shall we also contribute our comment?

The dead line is 6 APRIL US time that is around Sunday noon our time.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[solasido]

This is the link to comment http://www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=NOAA-NMFS-2010-0036-0469 I think that non-US resident can also comment because the identity is not US based. There is an option to specify our country. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[solasido]

The problem here is that US has powerful lobby, we never know, once NOAA managed to push it to an ACT, it may then try lobby CITES to follow which will then impact us.

Owning an endangered species is illegal. This will mean we need to throw away our precious SPS? no way!

[solasido]

I have submitted mine successfully just now

My main point is:

Conservation does not mean that we let the corals un-poached in the sea and do nothing on them.

We let them in the sea and they will slowly die for sure because the world is not going to successfully limit carbon emissions significantly. The world population keeps increasing and this driving demands that in various ways contribute to carbon emission. It is also a tough political decision.

Conservation means that we find a way, not only to protect them, but to create an environment for them to thrive.

This is what exactly, we as responsible reef keepers are doing. We create an environment as close as possible for the corals to thrive. There are many successful reef keepers that even propagate their corals for sharing or trade between the hobbyists.

Prohibiting trade does not address issue of conservation. Prohibition is only a blanket rule and laziest way to do something in the name of conservation. It is like burning the whole house to kill a mouse in the house.

The correct way for conservation is to campaign for responsible reef keeping via education, sharing of knowledge in Internet forums, and if this is not enough, I would like to propose "Certification" on reef keeping. This means that:

* A customer who would like to purchase a species, will need to have the knowledge on the species and in what kind of environment it thrives.

He will need to be certified.

* NOAA should provide certification on stony-coral keeper.

* Only certified keepers are allowed to purchase the coral from local fish shop.

In this way, we mobilize stony-coral keepers in the world to play part in conservation.

[Terryz_]

It would only means that we wun get to see any of the listed coral being collected and imported.. Te ridiculous thing that they are banning everything, be it wild collected, maricultured and aquacultured which is redundant to ban maricultured and aquacultured specimens... Another thing is that even of the listed species is being collected, it is still going to be collected and sold under another name because they cant be taking DNA test for each of the SPS collected and some are not even distinguishable by the naked eye...

[james72]

Well said solasido ! I share the thoughts as you on the "lazy man" approach of prohibition. Just like what "Pay and Pay" group like to do. Ban this ban that, fine here fine there.

[braincoral]

Ban. .then thats the end of my reef keeping