CNN Marine Ornamental Fish Story from Hawaii

[scottfarcuz]

What police reports were ever found to back up the one guys report? ....HYPE

On January 1998, DOCARE officers received an anonymous tip and two men were arrested off O‘ahu’s Ka Iwi coastline for fishing with chlorine. The two were found in possession of chlorine, a highly poisonous chemical, along with a variety of reef fish. Nets, scuba equipment, various gear and the boat used in the offense were forfeited, and the individuals were fined and given community service time.

http://www.hawaii.gov/dlnr/chair/pio/HtmlNR/03-27.htm

 

[spawner]

Kalkbreath wrote:

The idea that fish dont hide in dead coral is silly as well. They hide in old tires and dead rock every where in the world where live coral is not an option. Fish hide in bleached dead coral in fish stores through out the USA as well , so the idea that bleached items cant sustain life near them is silly.

HYPE

You miss the point. Thick headed and plain dumb on this one. One of the more ignorant post you've made.

 

[Anonymous]

While I know Kalk can be frustrating, lets stay away from personal attacks.

 

[Anonymous]

Kalkbreath wrote:

The idea that fish dont hide in dead coral is silly as well. They hide in old tires and dead rock every where in the world where live coral is not an option. Fish hide in bleached dead coral in fish stores through out the USA as well , so the idea that bleached items cant sustain life near them is silly.

This is misinformation, and only partly true. I think you know that. Which leads me to two ideas - either you really are misinformed, or you are yanking our chains on purpose.

 

[clarionreef]

Thick headed and plain dumb on this one. One of the more ignorant post you've made.

Now Spawner,
Hes made several thousand posts and years before you got here.
I submit to you sir that it was not one of the more ignorant posts... and merely hovers around the 40th or 50th most ill-advised one.
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

Please stop dumbing this thread down with Kalk bashing. If you can say the same things without inflammatory language, no problem.

 

[Kalkbreath]

What police reports were ever found to back up the one guys report? ....HYPE

On January 1998, DOCARE officers received an anonymous tip and two men were arrested off O?ahu?s Ka Iwi coastline for fishing with chlorine. The two were found in possession of chlorine, a highly poisonous chemical, along with a variety of reef fish. Nets, scuba equipment, various gear and the boat used in the offense were forfeited, and the individuals were fined and given community service time.

http://www.hawaii.gov/dlnr/chair/pio/HtmlNR/03-27.htm

Lets sea ......"found in possession of chlorine, a highly poisonous chemical. " Its in your drinking water, Swimming pools and even naturaly in seawater! Im not in support of bleach fishing.....but the thresh hold for tiny reef fish is so tiny there is no way its bleaching large areas.

 

[PeterIMA]

Kalk, Found in possession of chlorine bleach PLUS other fishing equipment and the fish. Sounds like an open and shut case. They should have thown the book at them.

Peter

 

[MandarinFish]

Rich - I agree about no Kalk-bashing. I'd like to reply to a couple thoughts appropriately.

bleached items cant sustain life near them is silly.

there is no way its bleaching large areas

Bleaching, universally, is a detriment to the health of the biome. There is great interdependence within a food web, particularly in a reef ecosystem. Spawning corals, fish, inverts are all dependent on one another to keep the complex interrelationships healthy and animals alive.

I've dove in an artificial Hawaiian reef as well as at Molokini, and the difference is night and day. Corals can grow back, and grow on old tires, but bleach-fishing IMO should result in imprisonment.

Token slaps-on-the-wrist for ecological crime has gone on too long. Just my take.

As for the decimation of Hawaiian fish species in open zones VS no-catch zones, it's well documented and dramatic. Yellow tang populations are decimated in areas off the Big Island. I know this from people who study it for a living.

 

[Kalkbreath]

You really think that if these guys were caught with bleach and swim fins in an area torched white, that the prosecutor was worried about a conviction? Its more likely that there were no white dead areas and thats why it would be impossible to convict without any visible damages to show a jury. Explaining to twelve of these guys peers, how "just cause ya cant see the damage ,dont mean its not in there somewhere" wont work like it does with reef tank hobbyists!.
Hawaii is known for its hard line approach to rule breakers. Even getting caught sneaking fish on a airplane will end you in court. There is no way they dropped charges for bleach fishing with visible bleach damage around the area they werecaught fishing. Something is fishy with the story.
As for The Kona Coast and yellow tangs , The fish numbers have remained stable for decades. Yes, the numbers are much greater in the no take zones. but thats the catch ..............its only when the numbers in the no take zones start declining that the region is being over fished! 8)


I can rake my yard clear of leaves each week , but as long as the tree tops above continue to remain full and healthy ....... the leaves which drift down to the ground where I collect them, are simply a harvested bi product of the healthy canopy above........... :wink:

 

[mkirda]

The idea that fish dont hide in dead coral is silly as well. They hide in old tires and dead rock every where in the world where live coral is not an option. Fish hide in bleached dead coral in fish stores through out the USA as well , so the idea that bleached items cant sustain life near them is silly.

No one ever said that dead coral heads can't sustain life, Kalk.

Only *you* have ever made that suggestion.

Where you are running into trouble is in your utter lack of understanding of simple coral reef ecology. (I can recommend Sorokin's book, even with the sometimes confusing wording. Russian translations sometimes are difficult...)

The issue is this: If you compare the carrying capacity of two identical reefs, one where the coral cover is approaching 100% (Essentially pristine reef) and one where the coral cover is down to 10% (severely degraded reef), the first thing that you will notice is that, on the pristine reef, there are more fish. I don't mean just a few percentage points, either. I'm talking the difference between drizzle and intense thunderstorm, or a few snowflakes and a blizzard.

People that do this for a living can provide data that shows not just one, not just two, but three orders of magnitude difference.

So, it isn't that a damaged reef doesn't have fish. It does. Sorta. Most of them are low-valued and uninteresting fish from both a marine ornamental perspective and from a food fishing perspective. The number of genera drop, the numbers of species drop, and the number of fish drop.

What is so completely different is when you dive on a great reef and find yourself practically immersed in fish. The difference has to be seen to be appreciated. The biomass of fish increases 100-fold. The numbers of species increase, as well as the number of genera.

Comparing an old-tire 'reef' to the real thing is also quite the interesting choice here. Again, it betrays a lack of understanding. "Tire reefs" were proposed in the 70's, and showed some intial signs of success, but the longer tires are in the water, the more they degrade. Coral recruits will fall off. Fish will tend to congregate wherever there is structure in the water, but it turns out that tires don't provide much real cover. Fish recruitment is pretty poor overall, and the idea of using old tires as reefs was pretty much abandoned when the data over time was analysed.

I really don't understand why it is so hard for you to accept that cyanide kills coral. Given that bleach is a strong oxidizer that attacks organics especially, it should follow plainly that a squirt of bleach onto a layer of tissue only few cells thick would kill off that tissue.

If you feel so strongly that it doesn't, then why not try this little experiment. You can write it up and submit it. Take a boxful of your corals, put them into a tank, squirt each of them with a bottle of bleach, wait ten seconds, then remove them to a tank with clean water. Then write up the mortality rates.

Oh, and you can put fish in the tank too, if you so desire.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[mkirda]

I can rake my yard clear of leaves each week , but as long as the tree tops above continue to remain full and healthy ....... the leaves which drift down to the ground where I collect them, are simply a harvested bi product of the healthy canopy above........... :wink:

8O Wow.

Where do I start?

How about this... First, you gotta take a chainsaw to all of those trees.
Then, you gotta take a chainsaw to your neighbor's trees.
Then, you gotta take a chainsaw to every tree in your county.

Then, you gotta see how many leaves you find in your yard.

You'll get a few. And the numbers won't change that much over time for decades...

THEN, your analogy makes sense, sorta.

 

[Kalkbreath]

If the protected area has the same number of fish year after year even with a large removal of fish weekly from collectors fishing just outside the MPAs. .....that means what is swimming into the collection zones is extra fish over flowing from the protected zones.
New baby yellow tangs........ just like tree leaves are a renewable comodity .....It matters little what happens to tree leaves after they fall from the place they grew .........

 

[mkirda]

If the protected area has the same number of fish year after year even with a large removal of fish weekly from collectors fishing just outside the MPAs. .....that means what is swimming into the collection zones is extra fish over flowing from the protected zones.
New baby yellow tangs........ just like tree leaves are a renewable comodity .....It matters little what happens to tree leaves after they fall from the place they grew .........

It isn't clear to me that you can support your contention that the number of fish in Hawaii has remained the same over time for decades.

Also, chlorine *IS* a highly poisonous chemical. Ever tried breathing chlorine gas? In combination with other elements, it can be rather benign (salt) or rather caustic (bleach). Maybe a reading of some history might help:
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWchlorine.htm

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[PeterIMA]

Mike, the URL you posted, sounds similar to the use of hydrogen cyanide gas used on the Kurds by Saddam in Iraq and the situation in Bohpal, India. I suggest that Kalk should try breathing chlorine gas to evaluate its effects.

Peter

 

[Kalkbreath]

Being in the fish Business, we use bleach daily,Im sure I have more weekly experience with it then either of you.
Some times unknown to us, fish are left in systems to be bleached (hiding inside ornaments) it takes very little time and the fish is dead.it travels from one cube to the next very quickly . A half cup of bleach poured on oposite end of a four cube 100 gallon tank will have the hiding fish swimming franticly in a few seconds! Bleach fishing on a reef has to be a delicate balance between too high a dose and too little, dead fish are of no use to collectors even if the fish dies from bleach exposure three days later its of no use to the collector.. Using bleach to extract fish living in sand mud burrows is not as delicate. The mud detoxifies the bleach almost instantly.
The amount of bleach necessary to clean an aquarium ornament white is tremendous.
One hand held squirt bottle emptied all at once into one of our rock systems wouldn't even turn live rock white or kill the coraline algae.
A certain wholesaler pour cups of bleach in thier rock system to keep the redox level up. in the open ocean the chlorine plume would become so diluted even a few inches from the bottles end , that its not really possible to end up with a white color a few hours later.
A coral getting squirted in the face with bleach might kill the coral a few days later.......but even as the coral dies I doubt the end result would be a WHITE color. Diatoms and Algae would colonize the skeleton as the tissue rots.
When the authors use the terms "white coral and devoid of any fish."
it puts into question the validity of the report.

 

[clarionreef]

When the authors use the terms "white coral and devoid of any fish."
it puts into question the validity of the report.
Right of course.
Hows a city reporter supposed to know that?
By city reporter I mean a guy earning a salary to make and turn in story copy routinely.

Just like the clown tang [A. linneatus] goof.
ANYONE CATCH THAT?
16,000 ACHILLES AND 22,000 KOLES ...SURE... BUT THERE ARE NOT 12,000 CLOWN TANGS COMING OUT OF HAWAII.
Surely the good researchers know the difference between a clown and a naso. Yes, they do....but a reporter does not.

Like the permanant bleaching white of coral...The clown tang figure is false and it MAKES ONE WONDER WHAT ELSE IS
The city reporters earning a salary to make and turn in story copy routinely.They take what fits and leave the rest. Embellish a bit here and omit that there.
EVER HEAR OF A BOAT GOING DOWN IN WATERS THAT WEREN'T SHARK INFESTED FOR EXAMPLE. You could read a story like that next to one about the decimation of shark populations on the same page.
Science is not reporting and reporting is not science.
Science has context, qualifiers and conditions....reporting has an obligation to hook and hold interest in a sales proposition...

I expected to see incidents reported on from 2004-2005 in the piece. Not some recycled event from the previous century.
In eco-speak, Cyanide sells...so does bleach. At least we have hundreds of cyanide fishers to tell us the story.
If Hawaiian readers know more of the prevalence of bleach fishing, please chime in here. I'll ask some divers there. I trust their experience far more then some dry reporter.
Steve



Steve

 

[Mike King]

Fishing using chlorine bleach has totally killed several reefs here in American Samoa and continues to be a problem. The village of Masausi where I've made quite a few dives was heavily “chlor fished” and as a result their reefs coral cover had a die off of over 90% and the remaining 10% had a much lower resistance to disease with 10% of the remaining corals being affected by coral diseases. While some fish remained in the area when the coral skeletons were intact the populations were very low. After cyclone Heta in 2004 the dead coral was gone and the remaining fish also left. What shocked me the most was the extent of the destruction from "chlor fishing" today not 1 cucumber or urchin can be found in Masausi, Algae has taken over the reef in many areas, and corals can only be found below 40' which is the limit the free diving fishermen could reach. When I first visited Masausi and saw the destruction I was shocked, from the dead coral skeletons I could tell that their reef once was one of the best in the area for coral cover. The village admitted that they had let some Tongan fishermen "chlor fish" their reef and didn't understand what that type of fishing would do. Masausi is one of our future coral reef restoration project areas and will be a big challenge in the near future. If anyone is interested I can show some pictures of their reef and the destruction caused by “chlor fishing”. I also have a video that I did for local TV on Masausi’s reef and the MPA they have started to help it recover (a case of too little too late).

Bleach fishing is still being done here, it’s outlawed but catching the criminals isn’t easy as our enforcement department here is understaffed and under-funded. The communities themselves must take the initiative to protect their resources this is starting to happen, within the last two months two boats and equipment have been seized by one local community for fishing within their Marine Protected Area. Now if we can only catch the “chlor” and blast fishing SOB’s that are still destroying what little pristine and good areas we have left here. :evil:

Mike

 

[PeterIMA]

Kalk, ARE YOU ADMITTING that Bleach (clorox) is used to CAPTURE marine aquarium fishes ALIVE for the aquarium trade??? Is this being done anywhere, or did you make up another false assertion??

Peter

 

[PeterIMA]

"Bleach fishing on a reef has to be a delicate balance between too high a dose and too little, dead fish are of no use to collectors even if the fish dies from bleach exposure three days later its of no use to the collector.. Using bleach to extract fish living in sand mud burrows is not as delicate. The mud detoxifies the bleach almost instantly. "

Kalk, Where did you obtain the quoted information?

Peter Rubec