Your living room aquarium filled with exotic fish might be one of the many reasons the planet isn’t doing so well right now. New research reveals that a crazy 90 percent of aquarium fish sold in the U.S. are wild-caught, not bred in captivity.
That means every time someone buys a neon tetra or clownfish from an online retailer, there’s a solid chance it was yanked straight from a coral reef. Of course, that’s disrupting delicate ocean ecologies.
The data was crunched by a PhD candidate named Bing Lin. Lin and his team from Princeton University analyzed listings from four major aquarium retailers and found 734 different species being sold.
Of those, 665 were sourced exclusively from the wild. Only 21 of those fish came from aquaculture, the fish version of livestock farming.
At least 45 of these species were already dealing with population declines, and 20 are considered threatened. Nearly all of those were wild-caught, too. In short, your desire to have exotic fish live in your man cave might one day be a contributing factor as to why that fish can no longer be found in the wild.
You Might Be Wrecking the Ocean With Your Exotic Pet Fish
The truly disconcerting part about the study is that Lin and his team believe that they’re likely underestimating the problem.
Lin’s team only looked at families of fish with known captive-bred species, meaning tons of wild-caught fish probably didn’t even make it into the count. They didn’t even take corals and crustaceans into account.
It’s not all doom and gloom, just mostly doom and gloom. One nice thing Lin and his team found is that ethically-sourced aquacultured fish are usually 28 percent cheaper. The report suggests that with better regulations, stronger oversight, and less demand for rare species, the aquarium trade could be less destructive.
Whether anyone in it will take the necessary steps to make it so is another matter. It’s not even as difficult as it used to be.
Researchers have dedicated a portion of their published research to pointing out that nations like Indonesia and the Philippines are developing ethical, sustainable aquaculture science and practices. Both of which heavily rely on marine life as a food source.
Maybe borrowing some of their techniques might save some of these fish species while also saving you, the discerning aquarium-haver, a little bit of money.
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