![]() Many fish, such as the regal blue tang named Dory in ''Finding Nemo,'' can only be bought from the wild. ''So we go in to help the community, to teach them how to collect properly and handle fish properly.'' ''A lot of conservation organizations have realized that you can't go out and ban the trade, because it's the livelihood for these villagers,'' Spalding said. The council has been working with countries in the Pacific to teach better fishing methods using small hand nets and to certify the fish collected with the environmentally safe techniques. Some increase their catches by using illegal cyanide, which stuns the fish and damages the coral reefs. Many of the Pacific saltwater fish are caught by villagers who make flippers out of plywood and free dive to the reefs to collect the tropical fish, said Sylvia Spalding, spokeswoman for the Marine Aquarium Council in Honolulu. The industry has grown tremendously in the past two decades, with the value of exported fresh and saltwater ornamental fish increasing from $40 million in the 1980s to $182 million in 2000, according to a study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Oceans Reefs & Aquariums, a subsidiary of the marine research institution, adopted the new technology and began breeding the fish, marketing them as a hardier, more environmentally friendly alternative to fish collected from the Pacific's coral reefs.Īt least 95 percent of the saltwater fish bought and sold in the aquarium hobby come from the wild, most from the waters around Indonesia, the Philippines, Fiji and other Pacific islands. Found in small crustaceans like krill and shrimp, the carotenoids give fish their vibrant orange and red hues. Researchers at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce, about 65 miles north of West Palm Beach, created an improved diet for the larvae and young clown fish with carotenoids, which are similar to the carotene pigment that makes carrots orange. Farms in Florida have raised the clown fish since the 1970s, but until five years ago, the fish often turned out small and pale.
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