Banning of hawaiian fishes

[yikai]

there's word going around that the fishes in hawaii will be banned for aquarium trade. We don't know how true it is but this time it's more serious than originally thought.

you can read more about it here

if that's the case, endemic fishes found no where else except hawaii will be banned and cannot be obtained.

this includes the bandit angelfish, hawaiian ventralis anthias, fuscipinnis anthias, sanguineus hogfish, hawaiian spotted toby, fisher angels, potteri angels, basabei butterfly, fremblii butterflies and many others. including the v rare personatus angels.

multicolor angels, yellow tangs, lemonpeels, rhomboid wrasse, flame angels, goldflake etc will NOT be affected because they are found outside hawaii, such as xmas islands, marshall islands etc. but they do come in with hawaii fishes via hawaiian shipments. so the prices may increase or be more difficult to obtain, no one knows as of yet.

fishes like chevron tangs will be hard to obtain since they are mainly caught in hawaii, although they exist elsewhere.

so if the ban is indeed true, we will not be seeing the following fishes.

[FuEl]

Maybe good news for Potters and Bandit. Most caught for the aquarium trade end up dying anyway.

[braincoral]

gd that it is banned

if not one day we might not be

able to get to c those fishes

in the nature anymore

[yikai]

Maybe good news for Potters and Bandit. Most caught for the aquarium trade end up dying anyway.

gd that it is banned

if not one day we might not be

able to get to c those fishes

in the nature anymore

you should be more worried for yellow tangs and banggai cardinals.

at the rate we're catching them, they're population have dwindled down by alot.

and banning of hawaii fishes have no impact on yellow tangs because they are found outside hawaii and can still be caught just as much. but of course it will help to some degree. as majority of YT are caught in hawaii itself.

the main hawaii fishes like fremblii butterfly, potters, basabei, fuscipinnis anthias, ventralis anthias, sanguineus hog etc are not in any threat from over harvesting (as of yet) !

potter's angel is the most common dwarf angel in mainland hawaii. and although difficult, it's not impossible. so it's a shame to see this species eradicated from the face of reef keeping for ever.

fremblii butterfly is gorgeous but very common in the wild, because butterflies are unpopular, their population is safe and are not over harvested like other fishes.

basabei, fuscipinnis, sanguineus hog and personatus are very deep water and very rare, and only pops up occasionally. in a year only less than 5 will ever be sold. their population remains very stable in the wild due to deep water living and the impact we have on these deep water fishes are far negligable! so to cancel these few fishes off the face of the trade is also not good news.

while i agree many of the fishes need some regulation, many others don't. many fishes that come out of hawaii are staple fishes for reefers worldwide. if the total banning of hawaii fishes is put in place, what will the hobby become?

maybe a target banning of specific fishes is more appropriate.

[Digiman]

I would say even yellow tang is not at risk! There are tonnes of yellow tangs out there, so i dun think we even collect more than 5% of them for the hobby!

We need figures as evidence! No figures provided on how many caught each year and how many left in the ocean i will not believe any particular hawaii species is at risk!

Anyway they are banning it not becos any fishes from hawaii is at risk of over collection. The reason for banning is becos when divers are collecting the fish they are destroying the reefscape and loss of the beautiful reefscape will affect the tourism business in hawaii! So they will ban the divers from collecting but still allow the tourists to dive and snorkel and trample on the reef.

[BFG]

Banning is good. It gives the population a chance to recover and increase their numbers as well as re-populate areas that were heavily harvested. Tonnes were collected but it is not known whether these tonnes survived but I can assure when tonnes are collected, tonnes are ended up dead in the trade, whether in the holding area, transit area, in the lfs or in the hands of the aquarist. So the banning of collection of fishes will be a beneficial one except that it is a death blow to the person plying the trade there.