Opportunities for Public Aquariums to Increase the Sustainability of the Aquatic Animal Trade

Abstract

The global aquatic pet trade encompasses a wide diversity of freshwater and marine organisms. While relying on a continual supply of healthy, vibrant aquatic animals, few sustainability initiatives exist within this sector. Public aquariums overlap this industry by acquiring many of the same species through the same sources. End users are also similar, as many aquarium visitors are home aquarists. Here we posit that this overlap with the pet trade gives aquariums significant opportunity to increase the sustainability of the trade in aquarium fishes and invertebrates. Improving the sustainability ethos and practices of the aquatic pet trade can carry a conservation benefit in terms of less waste, and protection of intact functioning ecosystems, at the same time as maintaining its economic and educational benefits and impacts. The relationship would also move forward the goal of public aquariums to advance aquatic conservation in a broad sense. For example, many public aquariums in North America have been instrumental in working with the seafood industry to enact positive change toward increased sustainability. The actions include being good consumers themselves, providing technical knowledge, and providing educational and outreach opportunities. These same opportunities exist for public aquariums to partner with the ornamental fish trade, which will serve to improve business, create new, more ethical and more dependable sources of aquatic animals for public aquariums, and perhaps most important, possibly transform the home aquarium industry from a threat, into a positive force for aquatic conservation. Zoo Biol. 32:1‐12, 2013. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Uncovering an obscure trade: Threatened freshwater fishes and the aquarium pet markets

“…Ornamental fisheries are often comprised of a few key endemic species, with more commonly, widely available species being filler for the orders (Rhyne et al, 2012a). However, often, these fisheries can help provide protection to extant ecosystems (Tlusty et al, 2008), and thus each species within a fishery, as well as the entire fishery needs to be evaluated for its overall role in supporting a fully functioning social-ecological system (Tlusty, 2002;Tlusty et al, 2013;Rhyne et al, 2012b). …”

“…Deciding which species should feature in the trade and the manner in which they are to be sourced (wild caught or captive bred) (Tlusty, 2002;Tlusty et al, 2013) should be the first step for a sustainable aquarium industry in India. Even a very recent list of potential freshwater species for certification and geographical indication prepared by the MPEDA (Silas et al, 2011) contains several threatened species with a restricted range, including those found only inside protected areas.…”

“…It is critical to assess the trade data for veracity, and also to annually report on the number and diversity of species being traded (Rhyne et al, 2012a). Only through the collection and appropriate analysis of trade data, will it be possible to make any assurance that appropriate measures are being sufficiently implemented to deliver wild sourced fish for the home aquarium hobby that have full societal and ecological benefits (Tlusty et al, 2013).…”

“…The aquarium fish trade is a large, biodiverse, global industry (Tlusty et al, 2013), worth around 15-30 billion US$ (Penning et al, 2009) and involving 5300 freshwater and 1802 marine fish (Hensen et al, 2010;Rhyne et al, 2012a). Ninety percent of the trade volume revolves around tropical freshwater fishes of which all but 10% are captive bred, and the remainder comprise of diverse wild-caught species (Olivier, 2001).…”

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“…The ornamental fish trade has an approximate value of 6 billion USD (Holthus & Gamain, 2007) each year and includes sales of more than 5300freshwater species and billions of specimens annually (Collins et al, 2012;Helfman, 2007;Hulme, 2009;Tlusty et al, 2013). 1 The vast majority of ornamental fishes in the aquarium trade are of freshwater origin and farm-raised, where aquaculture provides 90% of the specimens (Whittington & Chong, 2007).…”