a picture for kalk...

[mkirda]

You really think there is only one guy and one cyanide bottle in PI ? I think the 40,000 squirts a year in the region would be from several collectors......... :wink:

No, I think this is yet another purile attempt at blowing smoke up the forum's rear.

Based on your estimate of 40,000 squirts per bottle.
Based on a talk with fishermen that bottles would get reloaded two times per day.
3 loads * 40,000 squirts = 120,000 squirts per diver per day.

Seeing that even the best collectors are hard-pressed to collect 300 pieces in a day, you are claiming that a collector uses 400 squirts to collect a single fish?

Sorry, Kalk, but that is ludicrous.

Carrying out the calculation further, 120000 X 100 sq. cm. = 12,000,000 sq cm or 1200 sq. meters per diver per day of collecting.

I think you are off by at least two magnitudes of order.

Funny that your estimate goes way beyond even the most avid reformist's worst nightmare.

To carry this out further, if we go with a conservative estimate of 1000 divers on any given day collecting with cyanide, you are looking at a loss of coral of 1,200,000 sq meters per day. Or we can say 1,200 square kilometers coral death per day. 43,800 square kilometers loss per year.

If I were to go with far more conservative estimates, and say that there were roughly 300 squirts total per day per diver, we'd be talking 300 x 100 sq. cm, or 30,000 sq. cm total. Or three meters killed per diver per day. With a conservative estimate of 1000 cyanide collectors, we're talking 3 square kilometers per day, with habitat loss of over 1000 square kilometers per year. Such numbers are obscene to me, and yet seem well within the limits of reality.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[naesco]

Vitz

once again i ask you naesco-what have you done to help the problem?


This is a question you must answer. It is your industry that caused and continues to cause the damage to the reefs.

It is you livlihood at stake.

Be part of choosing a leader, developing a plan and doing whatever it takes to stop the cyanide trade. Rather than continue this personal attack, provide some solutions.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for adding to the conversation Neasco Now can you answer some questions posed to you, rather then make an end run around them?

 

[naesco]

Thanks for adding to the conversation Neasco Now can you answer some questions posed to you, rather then make an end run around them?

Your welcome. Now let us await the progress achieved by those who are attending MO2004 and see if it there is progress, particularly on the CDT.

 

[naesco]

sorry

 

[Kalkbreath]

You really think there is only one guy and one cyanide bottle in PI ? I think the 40,000 squirts a year in the region would be from several collectors......... :wink:

No, I think this is yet another purile attempt at blowing smoke up the forum's rear.

Based on your estimate of 40,000 squirts per bottle.
Based on a talk with fishermen that bottles would get reloaded two times per day.
3 loads * 40,000 squirts = 120,000 squirts per diver per day.

Seeing that even the best collectors are hard-pressed to collect 300 pieces in a day, you are claiming that a collector uses 400 squirts to collect a single fish?

Regards.
Mike Kirda

Its much more acurate to count backward. How many fish are imported ? Of those fish how many are collected with cyanide? And then of the fish that are collected with cyanide. how many are collected as groups? Over half of the fish from PI are Damsels. And damels are collected fifty fish or more at a time. So just there , we have taken half the fish from PI and divided by 16 percent {Peters numbers on the lasyt three years for damsels} Thats 1.5 million fish by sixteen percent= 240,000 cyanide damsels then divided by 50 [ collected as a group of 50 damsels] and what we are left wtih is 5,000 cyanide squirts ........for the year to collect half the fish that are exported from PI. Next tangs , are almost always collected in a school. So how many tangs on average are collected as a group when cyanide is used? Cyanide is pretty effective at getting every fish if the coral head collected . Much more so the netting. Lets use twenty as the number. So this would mean that even if twety five percent of tangs test positive for cyanide.......and there are 200, 000 tangs exported from PI each year, of the fifty thousand cyanide collected tangs it only requires two thousand squirts to collect the fifty thousand tangs .....at twenty tangs per squirt. I could continue to give examples of how many squirts translate ito how many fish .....but I think you get my drift. It does not take very many squirts to collect all the fish this hobby requires in a year . Based on the examples above, it only takes 7,000 squirts to collect over half the fish for the year. Thats not very many squirts over 25,000 square kilometers...And most if not all squirts are either not squirted in live coral or not at high enough concentration to harm the coral.........and surely Not enough to account for the wide spread damage over the 25,000 square kilometers you link to our trade. :wink:

 

[hdtran]

Kalkbreath writes:

240,000 cyanide damsels then divided by 50 [ collected as a group of 50 damsels] and what we are left wtih is 5,000 cyanide squirts

If I understand this sentence correctly, Kalkbreath asserts that a single cyanide squirt from a squirt bottle can capture 50 damsels.

Let me first throw in my usual disclaimers: (1) I'm a hobbyist, not 'in the industry' (except as the one spending my money); (2) the only marine fishing I've done is at Costco, hunting for the elusive farmed salmon (with artificial color added); (3) I've never dived/snorkeled in SE asia, though I have spent a few days on a beach in Malaysia. That said, I have spent a few days snorkeling in Hawaii (perhaps a better description is 'almost drowning in 6" seas'), and observed Hawaiian damsels (specifically, mostly domino damsels) and surgeonfish. The damsels did not school. From my observation, I could not see more than a couple of damsels per cubic foot of water near the coral formations. Away from the corals, I remember boxfish and larger critters.

It has been written that a 10cm x 10 cm area of coral is affected by an aquarium collector using cyanide, but I'll be generous, and assume that the volume over which the fish is collected is about 1 cubic foot (30 cm x 30 cm x 30 cm).

So, Kalkbreath, unless you show me a photo of a natural Indonesian or Filipino reef, with about 50 damsels in a cubic foot volume, I'm afraid that I cannot accept the assertion of 50 damsels per squirt.

Regards,

 

[Anonymous]

Hey, you look pretty good in that Spanish Inquisition robe you're sporting there, hdtran.

 

[Kalkbreath]

Kalkbreath writes:

240,000 cyanide damsels then divided by 50 [ collected as a group of 50 damsels] and what we are left wtih is 5,000 cyanide squirts

If I understand this sentence correctly, Kalkbreath asserts that a single cyanide squirt from a squirt bottle can capture 50 damsels.

Let me first throw in my usual disclaimers: (1) I'm a hobbyist, not 'in the industry' (except as the one spending my money); (2) the only marine fishing I've done is at Costco, hunting for the elusive farmed salmon (with artificial color added); (3) I've never dived/snorkeled in SE asia, though I have spent a few days on a beach in Malaysia. That said, I have spent a few days snorkeling in Hawaii (perhaps a better description is 'almost drowning in 6" seas'), and observed Hawaiian damsels (specifically, mostly domino damsels) and surgeonfish. The damsels did not school. From my observation, I could not see more than a couple of blue damsels ] Are the fish in the greatest demand.....yet also the cheapest? There is only one reason they are so cheap......Can you think of why that is? Gdamsels per cubic foot of water near the coral formations. Away from the corals, I remember boxfish and larger critters.

It has been written that a 10cm x 10 cm area of coral is affected by an aquarium collector using cyanide, but I'll be generous, and assume that the volume over which the fish is collected is about 1 cubic foot (30 cm x 30 cm x 30 cm).

So, Kalkbreath, unless you show me a photo of a natural Indonesian or Filipino reef, with about 50 damsels in a cubic foot volume, I'm afraid that I cannot accept the assertion of 50 damsels per squirt.

Regards,

The ten by ten centimeter plume is the area in which coral tissue is harmed...at the tip of the bottle where the concentration of cyanide has yet to be diluted ...How ever, the area of the usable plume[The area that has enough cyanide to stun fish, is much greater... perhaps ten times . Ten times more diluted then the source.[hobby collectors dont squirt into the fishes mouth] [they are trying to flush out fish they cant reach ] As for damsels schooling, it is true that not all damsels school ......but the majority of species we collect in do .....also keep in mind that collectors dont swim after one THREE CENT damsel.....They fish for the cheap fish by the hundreds. THATS WHY THEY ARE SO CHEAP. The most popular fish in the hobby [Green chromis and blue damsels] are in the greatest demand, yet the cheapest? There is only one reason this is true? Can you think of why this might be? Good luck!

 

[Anonymous]

Kalkbreath writes:

240,000 cyanide damsels then divided by 50 [ collected as a group of 50 damsels] and what we are left wtih is 5,000 cyanide squirts

If I understand this sentence correctly, Kalkbreath asserts that a single cyanide squirt from a squirt bottle can capture 50 damsels.

Let me first throw in my usual disclaimers: (1) I'm a hobbyist, not 'in the industry' (except as the one spending my money); (2) the only marine fishing I've done is at Costco, hunting for the elusive farmed salmon (with artificial color added); (3) I've never dived/snorkeled in SE asia, though I have spent a few days on a beach in Malaysia. That said, I have spent a few days snorkeling in Hawaii (perhaps a better description is 'almost drowning in 6" seas'), and observed Hawaiian damsels (specifically, mostly domino damsels) and surgeonfish. The damsels did not school. From my observation, I could not see more than a couple of blue damsels ] Are the fish in the greatest demand.....yet also the cheapest? There is only one reason they are so cheap......Can you think of why that is? Gdamsels per cubic foot of water near the coral formations. Away from the corals, I remember boxfish and larger critters.

It has been written that a 10cm x 10 cm area of coral is affected by an aquarium collector using cyanide, but I'll be generous, and assume that the volume over which the fish is collected is about 1 cubic foot (30 cm x 30 cm x 30 cm).

So, Kalkbreath, unless you show me a photo of a natural Indonesian or Filipino reef, with about 50 damsels in a cubic foot volume, I'm afraid that I cannot accept the assertion of 50 damsels per squirt.

Regards,

The ten by ten centimeter plume is the area in which coral tissue is harmed

this has been patently disproven, and the evidence has already been presented to you, it is a well established scientific fact the ANY exposure to cyanide will damage a coral considerably, if not beyond the point of no possible recovery-why do you ignore the proof, and the scientists data/observations? are you afraid that they are also part of some 'green conspiracy?

to all the perusers of this forum-the info of which i speak is right here, buried under some tens of pages of this ridiculous never ending argument
which exists solely because of kalk misquoting, miscalculating, and misrepresenting hard data and evidence


...at the tip of the bottle where the concentration of cyanide has yet to be diluted

er- the moment the cyanide exits the bottle it's already begun diluting
are you going to try in 6 months to whittle away your fictitious 'plume safe contact zone' to within .1mm of the squirt spout?

stand 20ft. (probably further) upcurrent from a coral, shoot a 'plume' of cyanide into the water, directly upcurrent from the coral

wait, and watch it die



...How ever, the area of the usable plume[The area that has enough cyanide to stun fish, is much greater... perhaps ten times . Ten times more diluted then the source.

cite the reference for the ld50/ld100 figures for damsels and coral that prove your contention

you can't because you've just invented these concentration proportions up out of thin air

right now that makes you a liar, 'till you prove otherwise w/a reference



[hobby collectors dont squirt into the fishes mouth] [they are trying to flush out fish they cant reach ]

how do you then explain all those dead fish in the photo? if they were'nt squirted in the mouth, then the cyanide must have been powerful enough to kill them from a distance, yes? not stun, but KILL.


that's one example w/visual proof of you being wrong, and the same goes for your ridiculous assertions stated above



As for damsels schooling, it is true that not all damsels school ......but the majority of species we collect in do

really? i thought fish like surgeons school, it's one of the reasons yellow tangs can be chased into a net


damsels don't school, but rather cohabitat in a group they are not, for the most part, open water schoolers ('schoolers' implies an open space of water, doesn't it? even to you?)

the fact that damsels will 'ball' together among a shelter item, like a coral, is partly what drives these divers to use cyanide- a damsel can run circles around the quickest hand that isn't trained to catch it w/out poison, or wedge into a crevice-as even hobbyists who have lifted one or 100 out of a tank w/a piece of lr can attest to


i'd say they get close enough to kill the coral head even at the 'lethal plume distance/concentration' you invented up above



.....also keep in mind that collectors dont swim after one THREE CENT damsel.....They fish for the cheap fish by the hundreds. THATS WHY THEY ARE SO CHEAP. The most popular fish in the hobby [Green chromis and blue damsels] are in the greatest demand, yet the cheapest? There is only one reason this is true? Can you think of why this might be? Good luck!

here's a clue or three:

your average hobbyist who's starting out looks foremost at his wallet-it's obvious that the cheaper priced fish will be purchased more often

just because it's bought more, doesn't mean it's necessarily more 'popular'
people may be buying it because it is what is 'most available' in the price ranges they prefer to buy.


if the divers don't want to go after cheap fish (your '.03 center's'), why would they even bother with damsels at all?

if they upped the amounts of other species, in volume caught, the price would go down, and those new substitutions would then become the 'most popular'

but they can't, can they?

know why?

because we helped kill alot of them off, or over collected them in a non-sustainable fashion

*note that i do not assume 100% blame to the OM industry


i've seen damsels double in price, or more over the past 6 yrs or so.

they also are coming in in smaller sizes than were more commonly available circa '95, in this country

 

[mkirda]

Its much more acurate to count backward.

Kalk,

Accurate in terms of what exactly?

"Accurate" only if you want to minimize the damage that the trade does do.

IMPORTS to this country do not equal 100% of the trade. Not even close.

The Philippines exports to many other countries besides the US.
It also has a domestic market for marine fish.
Additionally, we can say that more fish are caught than are exported.
(We might argue about percentages, but not about the fact that more are captured than are sold.)

For these three reasons alone, we CANNOT work backwards.

It starts with the collectors. We must start from there.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[mkirda]

So this would mean that even if twety five percent of tangs test positive for cyanide.......and there are 200, 000 tangs exported from PI each year, of the fifty thousand cyanide collected tangs it only requires two thousand squirts to collect the fifty thousand tangs .....at twenty tangs per squirt. I could continue to give examples of how many squirts translate ito how many fish .....but I think you get my drift. It does not take very many squirts to collect all the fish this hobby requires in a year . Based on the examples above, it only takes 7,000 squirts to collect over half the fish for the year. Thats not very many squirts over 25,000 square kilometers...And most if not all squirts are either not squirted in live coral or not at high enough concentration to harm the coral.........and surely Not enough to account for the wide spread damage over the 25,000 square kilometers you link to our trade. :wink:

None of this makes any logical sense, and most of the assertions made here have already been proven false (i.e. not high enough concentration to harm corals.... WRONG! ). One squirt at low concentration cannot possibly collect 20 damsels- If it did, the blast out of the bottle would be strong enough to nuke half or more of a table Acropora 24 inches in diameter.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[mkirda]

They fish for the cheap fish by the hundreds. THATS WHY THEY ARE SO CHEAP. The most popular fish in the hobby [Green chromis and blue damsels] are in the greatest demand, yet the cheapest? There is only one reason this is true? Can you think of why this might be? Good luck!

Economics my dear Watson, Economics.

Don't tell me we have to explain supply and demand curves to you now...

Regards.
Mike Kirda
P.S. If they were in great demand: Hint- The price would go UP...
They are not in great demand, therefore they are cheap.

 

[hdtran]

Actually, I think Kalkbreath may have discovered something very important to us newbies: He's discovered how to catch those d@#$%^&*! damsels in our tank!

Just squirt in a small amount of cyanide to stun the damsel, take the damsel out (and dispose of as you wish). The amount to stun the damsel won't harm the other inverts (clams, corals, serpent stars, etc.) in the tank! :lol:

 

[JennM]

::::Gulps some of SeaMaiden's Asprin::::

Why do you guys waste your time and effort on Kalk? He lives in his own world, with his own statistics. The energy wasted on he who will not see things as they are, could better be spent on educating somebody willing to learn. He keeps on trolling, you keep on biting. He doesn't represent the industry as a whole, but I *DO* think he represents the faction that knows the facts but continues to mire it in jabberwocky, using excuse after excuse to avoid any accountability.

I think there are 3 types of people in the industry:

The "Kalks" - they know but are in denial/don't care.

The uninformed - I think at the retail level this could actually be the majority - many are stunned to hear that cyanide is *still* a problem, they thought it was solved in the 70s and 80s.

And those who are keenly aware of the issues, and are doing something about it.

Sadly I do think that groups 1 and 2 outnumber us in group 3.

Oh and Wayne, while you are pondering responses to the questions you keep evading like a politician, please note that I don't count myself in with your group of "reeformers". I am all for industry REFORM, but I, unlike you, am actually DOING something, and have been since I first opened my doors. I made a few "wrong turns" along the way, but for the last year or more I've been confident that I carry and sell clean fish - either by virtue of a known supply, or country of origin where cyanide is not an issue. The more you skirt questions and answer questions with questions and philosophical nonsense and MAC pipe dreams, the less and less credibility you have.

Yes, as Glenn pointed out, all aquarium fishes are going to die in our care, whether it be in the chain of custody, 2 days later, 2 years later or 2 decades later - one can argue the ethics of captive sustainabililty of a given organism in captivity, but either way, if it's not collected in a sustainable way, both for the species and its habitat, there will be nothing left, and the trade will continue to be at risk of closure.

Jenn

 

[naesco]

Oh and Wayne, while you are pondering responses to the questions you keep evading like a politician, please note that I don't count myself in with your group of "reeformers". I am all for industry REFORM, but I, unlike you, am actually DOING something, and have been since I first opened my doors. I made a few "wrong turns" along the way, but for the last year or more I've been confident that I carry and sell clean fish - either by virtue of a known supply, or country of origin where cyanide is not an issue.

I think your absolutely great.
The reefs thank you.

 

[Anonymous]

:roll:

 

[naesco]

Thanks for adding to the conversation GrehsamH

Do you know whether MO2004 is over?
Have you heard whether the most important issues raised in this forum have been dealth with?

 

[Kalkbreath]

[first strike]

 

[Kalkbreath]

The ten by ten centimeter plume is the area in which coral tissue is harmed

this has been patently disproven, and the evidence has already been presented to you, it is a well established scientific fact the ANY exposure to cyanide will damage a coral considerably, if not beyond the point of no possible recovery-why do you ignore the proof, and the scientists data/observations? are you afraid that they are also part of some 'green conspiracy?

Really , any exposer? Cyanide is present in ALL seawater naturally.

to all the perusers of this forum-the info of which i speak is right here, buried under some tens of pages of this ridiculous never ending argument
which exists solely because of kalk misquoting, miscalculating, and misrepresenting hard data and evidence

er- the moment the cyanide exits the bottle it's already begun diluting
are you going to try in 6 months to whittle away your fictitious 'plume safe contact zone' to within .1mm of the squirt spout?

stand 20ft. (probably further) upcurrent from a coral, shoot a 'plume' of cyanide into the water, directly upcurrent from the coral

wait, and watch it die

Actually it is impossible to dilute enough cyanide in one quart bottle to raise the cyanide level in sea water [A twenty foot swath] That would require a giant squirt bottle. there are 1800 cubic feet [3x3x20] or so in a twenty foot by three foot swath or plume. Thats a thirty- thousand to one volume ratio.[one squirt bottle to 1800 square feet] You can only dilute so many cyanide tablets in one bottle.

..cite the reference for the ld50/ld100 figures for damsels and coral that prove your contention

you can't because you've just invented these concentration proportions up out of thin air

right now that makes you a liar, 'till you prove otherwise w/a reference

The greater the water volume, the less concentrated the mixture. Im not sure what your disputing?

how do you then explain all those dead fish in the photo? if they were'nt squirted in the mouth, then the cyanide must have been powerful enough to kill them from a distance, yes? not stun, but KILL.

That photo is more then likely a set shot. Not to say that fish dont die from cyanide. Over doses do happen ,but when they do the collector learns quickly that he had better ease up on the level of cyanide ....or he will never have any fish to sell. Do you really think collectors dont care if their blue tangs or blueface angels die ? Not ony do the fish collected with cyanide have to survive the initial exposer......but the exposer has to be so lite that the fish survive for another week or two! Thats how tiny and presice the cyanide level must be!

Really? I thought fish like surgeons school, it's one of the reasons yellow tangs can be chased into a net


damsels don't school, but rather cohabitat in a group they are not, for the most part, open water schoolers ('schoolers' implies an open space of water, doesn't it? even to you?)

the fact that damsels will 'ball' together among a shelter item, like a coral, is partly what drives these divers to use cyanide- a damsel can run circles around the quickest hand that isn't trained to catch it w/out poison, or wedge into a crevice-as even hobbyists who have lifted one or 100 out of a tank w/a piece of lr can attest to

Correct......the damsels more the often stay in the coral head even when its lifted out of the water and over a bucket! The damsels fall out after a few seconds . There is no need to use poison. Thats why these fish are so cheap.

here's a clue or three:

your average hobbyist who's starting out looks foremost at his wallet-it's obvious that the cheaper priced fish will be purchased more often

just because it's bought more, doesn't mean it's necessarily more 'popular'
people may be buying it because it is what is 'most available' in the price ranges they prefer to buy

if the divers don't want to go after cheap fish (your '.03 center's'), why would they even bother with damsels at all?.

Because they are so easy to collect. and dont require a boat or poison to collect

if they upped the amounts of other species, in volume caught, the price would go down, and those new substitutions would then become the 'most popular'

Not really , of the two hundred types of damsels collectors could collect.....only ten types or collected in large numbers. Do you know why that is?

i've seen damsels double in price, or more over the past 6 yrs or so.

they also are coming in in smaller sizes than were more commonly available circa '95, in this country

actually the price increase at the "pump" [tank] has to do with increased Airfrieght not what the collectors are charging. Also the devalue of the US dollar as of late is making your buck have less bang in overseas economies