We will be focusing on the negative effects that fishkeeping can have in our environment, both internationally, and domestically. To be more precise, our ocean, lakes, rivers and our tanks. It may not be known by the general population that most aquarium-kept saltwater and freshwater fish are wild-caught. Though we will be focusing on saltwater. They come from all over the world. The Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Ocean are where the majority are collected. Initially these fish were seized by using poisons and cyanide without a care as to how they effected the environment, fish would pass from severe internal damage and the reef structure that they inhabited would be decimated. Although, collecting from the wild has gotten stricter, and now most fish are netted, a lot of fish that go through the trade still end up dying. A ban was implemented in Hawaii from collecting fish for ornamental keeping, due to the fragile ecosystem and large quantities of fish being removed from the environment.
Morally, it shouldn’t be a practice anyways as a good majority of these fish also fall into the wrong hands of inexperienced keepers which can result in unhappy fish who were pulled from their natural home, ultimately perishing from refusing to eat, parasites, or mistakes from their new owner. These fish are subjected to a terrible and stressful experience before they even arrive at the retail shop as they are placed into small bags with minimal water and shipped across the world. Supporting purchase of wild-caught fish not only destroys our reef but can endanger the health of one’s tank if they own captive-bred as fish from the wild are more likely to introduce deadly parasites that can essentially destroy and kill the aquarium’s inhabitants. We will talk more about this in the page, “Captive-Bred and Illnesses”
