It is the belief of the North American Native Fishes Association (NANFA) that
the "legal and environmentally responsible collection of native fishes for
private aquaria [is] a valid use of a natural resource."
NANFA has drafted a "Code of Ethics" for people who collect native fishes from
the wild and maintain them in private aquaria. It is available at:
http://www.nanfa.org
>Someone once told me that it's a way to educate and
>capture the interest of people.
Yes. According to NANFA, "Captive husbandry of fishes acquaints people with
organisms they might otherwise never see alive or know existed, and affords
people an opportunity to witness and appreciate their behaviors (feeding,
breeding, parental care, etc.). Such acquaintance is a vital first step in
fostering environmental awareness and promoting a conservation ethic."
>But that does not seem to be a valid argument for personal collections.
>A public aquarium or school aquarium perhaps, but not for personal use.
I think it's a perfectly valid argument for personal collections. Education does
not have to be confined to public aquaria or schools. Much learning can occur in
the home, and SHOULD occur in the home if children are present. The act of
caring for an aquarium can teach valuable lessons about water quality,
biological diversity, morphological and ecological adaptations, species
interactions, etc. And since the lessons occur in the home, they are being
taught -- and reinforced -- 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
But, as indicated in the NANFA statement above, education is only part of the
benefit. Appreciation may yield even greater long-term benefits. Not everyone
has the wherewithal to visit public aquaria, or to observe fishes in the wild.
But a native fish aquarium can instill a deeper awareness and appreciation for
unseen and easily overlooked aquatic creatures by bringing them into the home,
where they can be seen day after day after day. As wonderful and as necessary as
public aquaria are, they can be expensive, and crowded, and noisy. But in the
solitude of a home, one can enter into a closer, more reflective communion with
the fishes in one's care. What better way to encourage people to place a higher
value on aquatic ecosystems than to allow them to have a living replica of one
in their homes?
True, such an argument has its limits. One does not need to keep a tiger in
order to appreciate it. But unlike charismatic megafauna such as tigers and
pandas and bottlenose dolphins, minnows and darters and most other native fishes
are largely overlooked and neglected, and need all the awareness they can get.
As long as only small numbers of common (non-protected) species are collected,
no harm should come to the population at large.
What worries me, though, is that some native fish collectors are just that --
collectors. They aquire and keep native fishes as if they were stamps or
baseball cards. The more they have, the better. The rarer the fish they have,
the
better. They acquire these fish -- sometimes illegally, sometimes irresponsibly
-- with little or no concern for their natural history, or ecology, or
conservation status. I really don't know what to say about such people except
that acquiring things is a universal urge of human behavior. What would the
great natural history collections be like were it not for our desire to collect?
I, too, have spoken with biologists who would rather that native fish
enthusiasts leave well enough alone. I understand and cannot find fault with
those who argue that nature belongs in nature. After all, removing a fish from
the wild and subjecting it to a life in captivity, where chances are it will die
without passing on its genes, does not help the fish and the population it's
from. But can such a practice benefit the species at large, and other, perhaps
rareer species? Public aquaria that exhibit cetaceans need to constantly defend
their practices. Yet I would argue that the "save the whales" movement and the
tightening of whaling restrictions and quotas around the world are, in part, a
consequence of greater public awareness of these creatures due to their display
in aquaria and marine parks. Is keeping native fishes in aquaria any different?
Can keeping the common rainbow or tessalated darters inspire one to care more
about the endangered fountain or boulder darters? I think so.
This is, of course, an ethical discussion. As Dr. Goldstein pointed out in his
previous post, there are laws guiding the collection of native fishes in each
state, and those laws have to be followed.
>The other question: should people who want to keep
>native fishes in their personal aquariums be encouraged
>to purchase or trade only in captive propagated
>specimens, ones that can never be released into the wild
>again?
Acquiring a captive bred specimen of a fish is always preferable to removing a
specimen from its native habitat. But the reality is that very few North
American natives are being propagated either commercially or privately, and that
many interesting species (e.g., pirate perch) are difficult if not impossible to
culture. What's more, I doubt that native fishkeeping will ever be popular
enough (see below) to sustain a commercial market.
>If the hobby of keeping native fishes becomes more
>popular (as birding has become in the past decade), it's
>something that needs to be seriously thought through.
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your POV, the hobby has never been
popular, and I doubt that it ever will be. For the average fishkeeper,
collecting and keeping natives is far more difficult than buying and keeping
store-bought tropicals. Then there is the problem of access. A cichlid keeper
from, say, California, has access to the same species as a cichlid keeper from,
say, Tennessee. But a native fish enthusiast from California has access to no
native Californian species, while an enthusiast from Tennessee has literally
hundreds of colorful minnow and darter species in his or her veritable backyard.
I believe this kind of imbalance helps keep native fishkeeping from being more
than a fringe or esoteric pursuit.
>This reminds me of a good-natured but serious talking-to
>I got from a USFWS biologist about my avid shell-
>collecting activities ....
Everything we humans do has an direct or indirect interaction with the natural
world. Even our best, most well-intentioned efforts to admire and cherish nature
can have negative consequences. Perhaps the best that an organization like NANFA
can hope to do is to maximize the positive interactions and minimize the
negative.
Chris Scharpf
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