Hawaii ban is official.

[kenchilada]

Come on guys, aren’t we sick of yellow tangs anyways?

 

[DaddyFish]

Come on guys, aren’t we sick of yellow tangs anyways?

No man, I have three, two normal, one is an adopted rescue that was nearly dead, nearly starved to death and without most of its fins. But the little guy has made it back from near death and is my "ugly duckling". I love YTs, so much so that I bought a big tank just for them. Setting it up now.

My Ugly Duckling...

 

[rmay6850]

Short plane ride

Sad

Incidentally, I snagged a flame wrasse, convict tang, and a moorish idol today.

Hawaii has some of the best and healthiest fish. Sigh.

 

[Tamberav]

All this Yellow Tang love and no Kole Tang love?

Can we stop selling dried seahorses, sand dollars, and starfish for souvenirs now?

 

[Kershaw]

Some of the comments confuse me. People make comments like they don’t own any live stock, why are you even in hobby if collecting fish is immoral?(Rhetorical question) IMO the dent we make in nature is .000001% compared to amount of fish killed for food. I have seen pictures on here in the past that show mountains of tangs on fishing boats for food. People will always find a way to justify there opinions reefers and hippies alike.

 

[jcherr007]

Christmas Islands are still open and will offer many Hawaiian Fish. Truth be told Hawaii had one of the most well managed fisheries in the world. There was 0 reason to shut down collection other than crazy nuts. This is coming from someone who has an ecology degree.

While getting my degree professors presented me with Hawaii as an example of the most well managed and maintained fishery in the world.

The fundamental misunderstanding about coral reefs is that they are space limited. The greatest threats to reefs are ones that limit the amount of habitable space. In Hawaii this is primarily agricultural run off. Unfortunately the aquarium trade is a more appealing target than farmers.

Anyone who does not understand that limiting space is the greatest threat to reefs does not have a basic understanding of reef ecology. In a space limited ecosystem it is very easy to harvest animals because as soon as they are removed more space is available to the ecosystem and it gets filled quickly. Removing habitable space from a reef is like removing water from a desert.

There was a article published several years ago in coral magazine that stated this very point, and after doing some digging and reading I found that the ecological impact of hobby fishing actually improved the numbers on the reefs and is very sustainable.. this law was passed by a bunch of uninformed politicians.. very disappointed at the current political climate we are living in. Not just this topic but many others.. too many people are making choices uninformed that are impacting way to many people simply because the “headline” is written a certain way...

 

[kenchilada]

I think its about time we found some NEW reefs to pillage with some exciting new species. Who needs Hawaii? Let's get some new fish! I'm so sick of checking Diver's Den every day, hoping to find something new. It never comes. And now we are trying to captive breed these same tired old fish we've all seen? Come on, knock it off, let's go exploring.

And now we're chasing hybrids? So every time an Achilles tang hooks up with a Powder Brown we're supposed to lose our minds and shell out $799?? It's a mutt!

 

[silvernblackr35]

Ultimately you have a bunch of people moving to the islands who are extreme in thought of preservation and animal rights.

Then you have a legitimate argument in the Native Hawaiians, who see it as stealing from the Aina. Who have literally just watched their land get taken decade after decade. I can understand their distaste in all of it.

They eat some of the same fish we keep in aquariums though.


I'm not going start a history lesson on Hawaii but even "natives" are just polynesian's who colonized the islands less than 1,000 years ago. Does something belong to them more than someone who's lived there for generations as well?

 

[MarineREEFpassion]

Despite everything being in the works, never thought this day would come. Until we get enough Captive Bred specimens, goodbye Yellow Tangs, Kole Tangs, Convict Tangs, Lavender Tangs, Achilles, and many others.

I wonder what would be the future of Tangs for Zebrasoma and other fish.

What would be good alternatives for most people in the now indefinite absence of the Yellow Tang?

is this a world wide ban or just a US ban? And I much prefer the orange shoulder tang and the unicorn tang anyways. Not a fan of the yellow or others from personal experiences.

 

[Zionas]

Hey yeah I think it could be a world wide ban though won’t hurt to double check. I’m personally a fan of Zebrasoma though. .?

 

[RazorRamon]

This hobby has NO ONE to blame but the people in it for this closure, and all the future ones that will come to pass, or the eventual import bans from third world collection points.

The hobby collectively treats livestock as disposable dollar signs, and until the majority of end points for sales (LFS / online LFS) take livestock health seriously, stopping the "shoveling them out the door before they die" behavior, nothing will change. It's either they are the ones that ultimately force the needed change in the collection supply chain, or the government will take the easier option and just shut things down. Hobbyists cannot be trusted to do this as there are countless examples of consistently rewarding doing the wrong thing, because it's cheaper.

This hobby has some of the most insidious, immoral behavior condoned on the back of a dollar, and the entire industry has done little to nothing, instead reveling in the success of it. I don't blame the activists for painting a giant target on it.

I whole heartedly agree with you. The bigger companies should give back to trying to rebuild and preserve wild reefs

 

[calvinstevens04]

I whole heartedly agree with you. The bigger companies should give back to trying to rebuild and preserve wild reefs

Yes please! Any companies that use Hawaii as a resource should have to send some percent of their revenue to build back the reefs. The money should also be used to fund a real “tang police” to protect against poaching.

 

[ClownWrangler]

Blanket banns of any kind are always driven by emotion rather than logic or reason and cause more problems than they fix. Also, to condemn the entire hobby with blanket statements is, well, there’s no kind word for it so I’ll keep that one to myself. I have been researching captive breeding for some time now and we all should be. Eventually all live animal imports will be banned to appease the emotion driven beings. Good bad or indifferent, it’s happening. A diver in a reef is a drop in the bucket compared to a fishing boat and no more of a threat than a shark or large predator fish. The most logical solution to any unsustainable collection that may exist is to assess the impact on each species individually and determine if collection is being done sustainably for that species. If so, leave it be, if not work with the industry (Ie BIOTA and ORA) to get captive breeding programs going for that species to out compete the collectors (in particular the poachers who the laws don’t effect). Any unsustainable collection can then be curbed through making it less profitable to collect from the wild, even by poachers.

 

[Reef_Obsessed]

I have a 4” yellow tang, healthy as ever. I’ll sell him for $2K right now if anyone is interested

 

[ClownWrangler]

The culmination of stock in captive breeding programs and the biodiversity within our tanks may very well one day become "Noah's ark" of the lost reefs as they are destroyed by other factors beyond our control. What some see as a disease may one day be the cure.

 

[saltyhog]

I've been diving in Hawaii on about 20 different occasions. Some of those reefs are in real bad condition.

Agree. I have seen several reefs with coral that looked bad, but fish populations looked incredible when I was there last. I took about 300 pictures and if exclude close ups I couldn't find a single picture without multiple yellow tangs. I saw Achilles, Gold Rim, Orange shoulder and Chevron tangs. Potter's wrasses and Potter's and Flame angels were common. Dragon wrasse, Coris wrasses were common. I saw big schools of pyramid butterflies and lots of Moorish Idols.

 

[kevin318]

I understand the Judge Crabtree ruled that all commercial aquarium fishing is completely banned in the State of Hawaiʻi, unless and until the aquarium fishing industry has completed the Chapter 343 environmental review process. Key words “unless” and “until” so let’s hope that it’s not permanent.

 

[Huskymaniac]

Agree. I have seen several reefs with coral that looked bad, but fish populations looked incredible when I was there last. I took about 300 pictures and if exclude close ups I couldn't find a single picture without multiple yellow tangs. I saw Achilles, Gold Rim, Orange shoulder and Chevron tangs. Potter's wrasses and Potter's and Flame angels were common. Dragon wrasse, Coris wrasses were common. I saw big schools of pyramid butterflies and lots of Moorish Idols.

I actually saw the opposite. No fish at all overrun bu Turf algea.

 

[Steph72]

I see both sides of the argument but the truth is bans like this usually end up hurting local economies and businesses who are trying to be responsible.

 

[Ross Petersen]

Yes indeed, but these nutcases don’t listen to scientific evidence.

Biodiversity is threatened - on coral reefs and globally - that's hard scientific evidence and true even if we don't believe it. What evidence are you referring to?