In my opinion the weakest link is actually a few of these areas.
For example:
The collector. These collectors are not collecting for the joy of it, they are collecting for income. They get pennies per fish. They need to feed themselves and thier families. Often collectors are locals of the region who used to go out and collect where they could take a small boat. This seems to be less frequent because of overfishing. So now they must spend time in remote locations for days. To finance this, the exporters and middlemen will give them advance loans which means they must now collect enough to pay off the loan AND make money for living. This tends to be bad for the animals as they will collect whatever they can and make the most they can with limited regard for conservation. So as long as these practices are forced upon the locals of the collection sites this is a weak link.
The middlemen of the exporters are a bad bunch, again, in my opinion. Often, they exploit the collectors. They pay pennies for a fish they will sell for many dollars. They also allow for the export and collection of many species that are rare, limited, etc.
The exporters run a business. Although they could do a better job with many aspects of thier operation, they pay for the animals and ship them off.
The wholesalers are another weak link. SOME do and are working to import animals that are collected safe and sanely as well as species that do better in captivity, yet those importers exist who will take anything to make a buck. That is bad for us all.
Last the consumer. Still I see all too many peopel in igonorance buy animals they are ill-equipped to care for. The animals dies and they do it over and over without learning a thing.
If we as a hobby were to fix a weak link, it would be the consumer link, as we can educate stores and consumers about how to care for animals, how to pick safe and sanely collected animals, support certification like MAC, and use the end dollar power of tghe consumer to dictate how we wish things to be run. As the end user, our dollar is the mighty tool to dictate how the other links behave. If there is no market for cyanide fish, or corlas that do not do well, then they will not import them.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Bill2:
<strong>Another topic just to throw out.
In the Chain of custody (simple):
Collector
Exporter
Wholsaler
Retailer
End User
Who do you think is the weakest link and why?</strong><hr></blockquote>