Hopefully I can provide a bit of insight and if I missed anything y'all want me to touch on please tag me. Obviously, much of what I'm saying from personal insight so some of my collegues within Biota may not agree but I'm also happy to ask any of them their opinions here too.
(Allow a strict certain amount of specimens to be collected BUT only by research facilities) I believe that if this had been the case we would have much more captive bred options now and people would have likely "bought into" the idea thus speeding up the growth of captive bred specimens in the hobby.
This actually has always been the case in Hawaii. If you are a scientific research facility you have been able to collect broodstock throughout the closure.
I've always been skeptical of business model of captive bred. It only works if wild caught becomes increasingly more expensive.
And it seems that there are a number of people pushing that narrative to promote higher prices for wild caught just to make captive bred feasible.
I personally love the idea of purchasing captive fish, but not at the cost that's being presented.
We actually were breeding yellow tang before the closure. There was no reason other than it is a popular fish for the aquarium trade and many people wanted a captive-bred alternative to wild caught and it would provide insight into other tang species.
I also personally think that CB should actually be less expensive than wild caught, not more expensive, simply due to what all is involved in collecting and shipping, etc. (Not that I think breeding them is easy or inexpensive, just comparatively speaking).
The real issue is when you breed a fish it doesn't pop out at a sellable size and that can vary by species. When purchasing a wild collected fish most of that cost is in the shipping because casting a net and getting hundreds of sellable fish doesn't take a ton of time but for me to sell a batch of yellow tang it's 4-6 months of growout which is rent, utilities, feeds, water quality, and tons of incredibly talented employees (ie expensive) to just sell the animal. If the stores or wholesalers had to hold every fish for 4-6 months their pricing would be impossible.
But as far as fish health and hardiness goes, I would rather "not" have a captive bred fish as they were not exposed to many, if any diseases so they won't have any immunity to anything.
We have very strict biosecurity measures in place, but no aquaculture facility is 100% sterile. Our aquacultured fishes' immune systems get plenty of exercise; we actually do use some natural sea water at our breeding facilities. When they get to our Florida facility for distribution, we occasionally do see some evidence of infection, and our marine biologists diagnose and treat as needed. Some of our customers know that we sometimes delay orders because I run diagnostics on our fish daily, and if I find even the slightest speck of what might be something, I hold back orders and won't ship. I'd rather be safe than sorry.
Especially since I'm not seeing evidence that the main three players today are living the life like the Wolf of Wallstreet.
I'm embarassed to let you know the amount of time I eat ramen a week. We're working on it though and growing everyday but I can guarantee none of us are living a lavish lifestyle and every single employee I have at my Florida facility is with us because they're incredibly passionate about what we do and how we're changing the hobby.
I would disagree for the sheer fact that just like everything in this hobby, prices go up for no real reason. And I always attribute it to the revolving door which is this hobby.
Pricing does sometimes go up for no reason in the hobby like with designer corals or new fad products but I think with fish it mostly stems to changes in policy, sourcing, and shipping. Obviously, everyone has talked about shipping the most the past 2 years since it's ballooned to unthinkable levels. Other changes are how the fish are collected (dynamite, cyanide, net training, overseeing certifications, equipment expenses, ect.) or quality of life changes for those collecting. Obviously, you want to sell the animals at the highest price as a fisherman and if someone is willing to pay more they are the ones that will get the fish, that might translate into a specific wholesaler having more diversity but also being more expensive.
The biggest difference I see between the 2 is that anyone can grow and propagate coral with a certain degree of success. But not everyone can rear fish fry. And I don't think what's stopping the ones that would want to is money, space, equipment etc, it's the knowledge to do so.
If anyone asks me how to breed any of our fish I usually provide a breakdown. Obviously, there's IP involved but most poeple ask about the yellow tang. There's dozens of scientific papers on how to breed them and the real reason it isn't as abundant as clownfish breeding is because it's very expensive and very hard. We are also always improving and a ton of our cost is research to make things better and improve which in Hawaii is all publishable data. There's also a ton of great people in groups like MBI who are happy to help anyone with a breeding project. Many MACNA talks do have specific breakdowns on how to breed things and are occompanied by scientific published papers. I would love for someone to breed other tang like achilles, tomini, naso, etc. because I'm also a hobbyist and I want to buy them.
Does it cost more to raise different types of fish from egg? Seems to me that it should be about the same. I understand that some fish produce more fry than others, but there is a huge price difference between CB fish. If it's expensive to buy wild caught, the CB people crank up the price to match or beat it. I guess it's a business, and they really don't care about protecting the environment, but they sell under the guise that they do.
Yes, cost is significantly different by species because there are different spawning queues, frequency of spawns, success rates, grow-out times, live feeds timings, etc. The real question is why is a mocha helmet picasso snow shoes clown more expensive than a regular ocellaris when it's the same species?
Also with the cuban basslet vs royal gramma, yes they are similar to breed but there are some differences in raising them but I wouldn't say anywhere near a ton of them are being produced. That facility is only able to produce so many which is why they're limited and still expensive but much less expensive than $3000+ many years ago. I believe in the last 8 years we've had them go from $1200 to $800 and now $600.
Hopefully I provided some insight to these questions.
