The future of the Marine Aquarium Industry?

[Usename]

First a small intro.

When I was just 16 years young I was already in the Marine Industry. Started making aquarium stands and canopy with the custom lights. Shortly after I started selling fish and coral from my house ( I lived outside the USA and this was easier to do). By the age of 19 I had my own store front and dealt exclusively with Marine Aquariums. Few years later, being a young guy I did not manage correctly the business and things started to fall apart ... at the same time I would always say.......

I am to young and I will have no future in this industry because I thought that well, there will probably be no Industry 15-20 years from then..

Well yeah right, big mistake. I no longer have my own business but I ended up working with in the industry .... duh!

So now I am revisiting my old fear..... How will it be 30 years from now?


So what you all think? How do you see yourself within the industry 30 years from now.... or 10 - 20 for those retiring

 

[Anonymous]

regardless of our personal employment status-the reefs are all slowly dying/disappearing

when they go, we go

 

[Anonymous]

er- mebbe not slowly

 

[PeterIMA]

I have to agree with Vitz, that within 30 years there will no longer be coral reefs, so there will no longer be a marine aquarium trade based on wild harvest. Climate change is insidious and most of us are now aware that warming of surface waters in various areas globally is occurring. The water temperatures in the hot spots already are causing coral bleaching. The frequency of El Ninos is increasing. I read in the paper yesterday that El Ninos occurred in 10 out of the past 12 years.

Another less publicized effect of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (much of human origin from automobiles and power plants burning fossil fuels) is that the oceans' pH has dropped 1 pH unit globally over the past decade. This trend is expected to continue and will be detrimental to all marine life.

The Vice Chancellor of Research and Graduate Studies at the University of South Florida, Dr. Christopher D'Elia believes the only future will be through mariculture. Can you guys breed/propagate enough organisms to supply the world trade?

The lack of concern by the aquarium trade will lead to more bans on the export and import of marine aquarium organisms. So, I am not optimistic about the future of the marine aquarium trade.

Peter Rubec, Ph.D.

 

[pyrrhus]

Can you guys breed/propagate enough organisms to supply the world trade?

Not yet, not by a long shot. However, I do believe that there are enough enterprising individuals out there that the marine aquarium hobby will persist for a long time to come.

I may not be able to grow enough coral to satisfy world demand, but I certainly can grow enough to supply local demand with a respectable amount of overflow.

 

[Anonymous]

I have to agree with Vitz, that within 30 years there will no longer be coral reefs, so there will no longer be a marine aquarium trade based on wild harvest. Climate change is insidious and most of us are now aware that warming of surface waters in various areas globally is occurring. The water temperatures in the hot spots already are causing coral bleaching. The frequency of El Ninos is increasing. I read in the paper yesterday that El Ninos occurred in 10 out of the past 12 years.

Another less publicized effect of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (much of human origin from automobiles and power plants burning fossil fuels) is that the oceans' pH has dropped 1 pH unit globally over the past decade. This trend is expected to continue and will be detrimental to all marine life.

The Vice Chancellor of Research and Graduate Studies at the University of South Florida, Dr. Christopher D'Elia believes the only future will be through mariculture. Can you guys breed/propagate enough organisms to supply the world trade?

The lack of concern by the aquarium trade will lead to more bans on the export and import of marine aquarium organisms. So, I am not optimistic about the future of the marine aquarium trade.

Peter Rubec, Ph.D.

the lack of, or presence of, concern by the aquarium trade is but a drop in the proverbial bucket, and therefore irrelevant

do you know how much pollution china will be spewing out in another 20 years ? over and above what it's spewing out today? THERE'S one bucket for ya

 

[Rascal]

Peter - Did you mean 0.1 pH unit globally over the last decade? I am very interested in that. Can you provide a reference?

 

[PeterIMA]

Rascal, Yes, I believe the pH of the world's oceans dropped from 8.2 to 8.1. I will post reference to the scientific studies later this week.

Peter

 

[Anonymous]

Rascal FWIW you can do a google search on Ocean Acidification pdf and will get quite a few abstracts on the subject.

 

[PeterIMA]

Ocean acidification is the name given to the ongoing decrease in the pH of the Earth's oceans, caused by their uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Between 1751 and 2004 surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to 8.14 (Jacobson, 2005).

In the natural carbon cycle, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) represents a balance of fluxes between the oceans, terrestrial biosphere and the atmosphere. Human activities such as land-use changes, the combustion of fossil fuels, and the production of cement have led to a new flux of CO2 into the atmosphere. Some of this has remained in the atmosphere (where it is responsible for the rise in atmospheric concentrations), some is believed to have been taken up by terrestrial plants, and some has been absorbed by the oceans.

When CO2 dissolves, it reacts with water to form a balance of ionic and non-ionic chemical species : dissolved free carbon dioxide (CO2 (aq)), carbonic acid (H2CO3), bicarbonate (HCO3-) and carbonate (CO32-). The ratio of these species depends on factors such as seawater temperature and alkalinity (see the article on the ocean's solubility pump for more detail).


Acidification
Dissolving CO2 in seawater also increases the hydrogen ion (H+) concentration in the ocean, and thus decreases ocean pH. The use of the term "ocean acidification" to describe this process was introduced in Caldeira and Wickett (2003). Since the industrial revolution began, ocean pH has dropped by approximately 0.1 units (on the logarithmic scale of pH), and it is estimated that it will drop by a further 0.3 - 0.4 units by 2100 as the ocean absorbs more anthropogenic CO2 (Caldeira and Wickett, 2003; Orr et al., 2005). Note that, although the ocean is acidifying, its pH is still greater than 7 (that of neutral water), so the ocean could also be described as becoming less alkaline.

Although the natural absorption of CO2 by the world's oceans helps mitigate the climatic effects of anthropogenic emissions of CO2, it is believed that the resulting decrease in pH will have negative consequences for oceanic calcifying organisms. These use the calcite or aragonite polymorphs of calcium carbonate to construct cell coverings or skeletons. Calcifiers span the food chain from autotrophs to heterotrophs and include organisms such as coccolithophores, corals, foraminifera, echinoderms, crustaceans, and some mollusks, especially pteropods. Aside from calcification (and specifically calcifiers), organisms may suffer other adverse effects, either directly as reproductive or physiological effects (e.g. CO2-induced acidification of body fluids, known as hypercapnia), or indirectly through negative impacts on food resources. However, as yet there is not a full understanding of these processes in marine organisms or ecosystems.

Under normal conditions, calcite and aragonite are stable in surface waters since the carbonate ion is at supersaturating concentrations. However, as ocean pH falls, so does the concentration of this ion, and when carbonate becomes under-saturated, structures made of calcium carbonate are vulnerable to dissolution. Research has already found that corals (Gattuso et al., 1998), coccolithophore algae (Riebesell et al., 2000) and pteropods (Orr et al., 2005) experience reduced calcification or enhanced dissolution when exposed to elevated CO2. The Royal Society of London published a comprehensive overview of ocean acidification, and its potential consequences, in June 2005 (Raven, et al., 2005).

While the full ecological consequences of these changes in calcification are still uncertain, it appears likely that calcifying species will be adversely affected. There is also some evidence that the effect of acidification on coccolithophores (among the most abundant phytoplankton in the ocean) in particular may eventually exacerbate climate change, by reducing the earth's albedo as well as oceanic cloud cover (Ruttiman, 2006). Present evidence suggests that dramatic changes in the biogeochemistry of the marine environment over the next 100-200 years can be avoided only with early and deep reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.


References
Caldeira, K., and Wickett, M.E. (2003). Anthropogenic carbon and ocean pH. Nature 425, 365-365.

Gattuso, J.-P., Frankignoulle, M., Bourge, I., Romaine, S. and Buddemeier, R. W. (1998). Effect of calcium carbonate saturation of seawater on coral calcification. Glob. Planet. Change 18, 37-46.

Jacobson, M. Z. (2005). Studying ocean acidification with conservative, stable numerical schemes for nonequilibrium air-ocean exchange and ocean equilibrium chemistry. J. Geophys. Res. Atm. 110, D07302.

Orr, J. C. et al. (2005). Anthropogenic ocean acidification over the twenty-first century and its impact on calcifying organisms. Nature 437, 681-686.

Raven, J. A. et al. (2005). Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Royal Society, London, UK.

Riebesell, U. et al. (2000). Reduced calcification of marine plankton in response to increased atmospheric CO2. Nature 407, 364-367.

Ruttiman, J. (2006). Sick Seas. Nature 442, 978-980.

Further reading
Cicerone, R., J. Orr, P. Brewer et al. (2004). The Ocean in a High CO2 World. Eos. Transactions of the American Geophysical Union 85, 351-353.

Doney, S. C. (2006). The Dangers of Ocean Acidification. Scientific American 294, 58-65.

Feely, R. A. et al. (2004). Impact of Anthropogenic CO2 on the CaCO3 System in the Oceans. (Abstract) Science 305, 362-366.

Kleypas, J.A., R.A. Feely, V.J. Fabry, C. Langdon, C.L. Sabine, and L.L. Robbins. (2006). Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Coral Reefs and Other Marine Calcifiers: A Guide for Further Research, report of a workshop held 18-20 April 2005, St. Petersburg, FL, sponsored by NSF, NOAA and the U.S. Geological Survey, 88pp.

Kolbert, E. (2006). The Darkening Sea: Carbon emissions and the ocean. The New Yorker magazine. 20 November 2006.

Sabine, C. L. et al. (2004). The Oceanic Sink for Anthropogenic CO2. Science 305, 367-371.

 

[Anonymous]

I have to agree with Vitz, that within 30 years there will no longer be coral reefs, so there will no longer be a marine aquarium trade based on wild harvest. Climate change is insidious and most of us are now aware that warming of surface waters in various areas globally is occurring.

Climate change/warming as a standalone issue isn't necessarily all that insidious. There are plenty of lines of evidence for this. Combine the climate change with the other, far more direct and brutal anthropogenic influences that you failed to invoke in your post and you're talking about a serious problem.

The water temperatures in the hot spots already are causing coral bleaching. The frequency of El Ninos is increasing. I read in the paper yesterday that El Ninos occurred in 10 out of the past 12 years.

Water temperature in the "hotspots" of the Pacific, like the core of the Western Pacific Warm Pool, can't really warm any more than they have. Convection and heat redistribution takes over from there. There are no shortage of reefs in the warm pool. Also, the frequency of ENSO-like conditions is increasing as warm conditions weaken cool-phase Walker circulation. However, the strength of warm phase events is correlated directly to the strength of the Walker circulation. Basically, the trend is towards more common, weaker ENSO events.

 

[Anonymous]

By the way Peter, we probably unknowingly fight each other for parking spots every morning.

 

[Rascal]

Peter and GMan - I apologize for the delay as I have been out of town, but thank you both for the response. Very intriguing to say the least.

 

[Twisted1]

Ok, please excuse me for sticking my nose in here....

I have been into the reef keeping hobby for a year now, and probablly the furthest thing from an expert there is.
But in this short time I have retained more information on the subject then I have probablly gathered on any thing in my life. I am consumed by it all.

So I am in the planning stages of starting my own coral farm, mariculture facility, what ever you want to call it. And this is what I have gathered in my own research, and a lot of this is assumptions based off of goverment actions, local, and world wide news reports, stories shared with me by a lot of other reef keepers mostly in the California area. And mostly just internet searches on very relaxed search terms such as "Coral depletion", "Reef destruction", "Future of reef keeping", "reef keeping industry", etc...

From what I understand an evolution may be taking place before our very eyes. The drastic, but slowly changeing climates, and chemical balance of the oceans and other regions, may actually be bending the life of the corals, rather then destroying it out right.
Yes, many will die, many of the corals with less tolerance to change will not make it, becomming extinct, other then those that have been maintained in captivity.
But if you look at the reef keeping hobby, how many times have you "fragged" out a piece of your favorite coral to a friend, just to see it a year later, and it looks nothing like the one you gave him, but is still thriving?
It may have thicker branches, or changed color, or changed it's growth pattern, or somethig less noticable, like developed a knack of torturing and killing another type of coral.
I noticed that diffrent tanks, will in fact grow the same coral in diffrent ways. As I said a lot of this is speculation, and assumptions because I do not have the means to test this completely. But If someone with the means was to take a good size colony and cut several one inch frags and placed them in seperate tanks with diffrent flow rates, chemical balances, water change schedules, lighting, etc... you will see several diffrent corals growing over the next year as each one takes on the personality that it's tank gave it.
So why won't a portion of the larger corals do the same? It is evolution, and if you follow the path of evolution in many other creatures you will see that the majority of those evolutionary changes took place because thier survival was challanged by a natrual change of balance in thier life.


Sorry to bore you all with my theories, but I been thinking alot about this.

As far as the business of reef keeping industry been at risk. I highly doubt it. If anything the destruction of the reefs, and the goverment limitations on the removal of corals from the reef willl maxamize the typical coral farmers business.
As many of you have discovered, some too late, the reef keeping hobby is highly addictive. Any one who has a reef tank is constantly looking for more, or better corals, fish, or inverts to put in thier tank. They are constantly looking for bigger tanks, or better lighting. It is an on going cycle.
So will the industry of tank raised corals, fish, and inverts be able to keep up with demand? Yes and no, as we all know, some of these creatures won't breed in captivity. Those are the ones to be concerned about.
As far as the ones that have been raised in captivity over the last couple years, they will continue to do so. And as more people like myself decide that they will try to make a business for themselves by doig so, the demand will be easier met. Untill then, the price for these items may rise considerablily.

Again, this is my stand point from an outsider looking to get into the industry. And anyone willing to give me insights, I more then welcome them, and anyone willing to give me advice on getting into this industry, please PM me, It would be greatly appreciated.
And if anyone knows a place to get some start up money!!!! I need it!!!

 

[Anonymous]

the majority of 'hobbyists' charges and the majority of trade in the commercial industry is of fish, not corals

only a fraction of the species sought after are presently successfully bred in captivity, much less on enough of a scale to be commercially viable and to supply a majority of 'hobbyists'.

also-how large a fraction of reef tank 'hobbyists' do you think the fragger population can also supply? (remember that internet bb participants, club members, frag 'societies' are a relatively small part of the saltwater tank owning populace as a whole)

once the number of 'hobbyists' who can afford a $50.00 blue damsel hits bottom , what will happen to the drygoods part of the industry? no-one (or far far fewer) will need skimmers, filters, tanks, food, etc etc. (as livestock gets more expensive, more folks will opt out of entering the hobby-saltwater is still a 'luxury' hobby, and will become ever more so yearly)

the die-off of the reefs will hardly occur slowly enough for most corals in the wild to 'adapt' as you suggest-especially with pollution factors present, imo

 

[Twisted1]

From a coral perspective the hobby is going to take on a hardship and wil have to adapt. Corals are kept in captivity fairly well, and a large portion of them are well spread out so that if one mother colony fails, there are several others to take up it's place. And with the reef clubs and some companies promoting frag swaps to further continue the success of maintain the coral propagation from one area to another, the corals should fair well in captivity.


As for fish. I am afraid I am still learning, from what I understand a couple variety of clowns are being bred pretty frequently and with great results.
A few types of inverts are also being bred very well. But what of the varity of other fish Angels, groupers, puffers, tangs, and gobies seem to be some of the most popular.
Which of these have been repeatedly tank bred and which are we threatening with harvesting from the wild?

I also think it is interesting that a couple corals made it to the endangered list before any of the common reef fish. Atleast that I have read.
I maybe showing my ignorance on this subject. But live and learn is a large part of this hobby/industry, because so many details are more based on opinions then facts, and so many things I have been told have worked for some, but not others. That might be part of the appeal though.

 

[PeterIMA]

It is good to see another scientist on RDO (even if he/she does not use their real name). We tend to agree, although it would be helpful to the reader if you made your points more clearly in simple english. While there are uncertainties about how quickly the impacts of climate change will be felt by human society and by the coral reefs, we agree that EL NINO (ENSO) events are becoming more frequent and that the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is warming the earth's oceans. I never implied the oceans would continue to get warmer. But, I believe that the hot spots will become more common and widespread.

As far as parking spaces are concerned, you are welcome to mine (it is about 5 blocks from the FWRI building).

Peter Rubec

 

[PeterIMA]

"Climate change/warming as a standalone issue isn't necessarily all that insidious. There are plenty of lines of evidence for this. Combine the climate change with the other, far more direct and brutal anthropogenic influences that you failed to invoke in your post and you're talking about a serious problem. "

My posting was about the direct impact of climate change on coral reefs. Perhaps you can expand on what you meant by anthropogenic influences.

Peter[/quote]

 

[Anonymous]

It is good to see another scientist on RDO (even if he/she does not use their real name).

Hi Peter,

Just a lowly grad student here. So anything I say is worth exactly what you paid for it. Nothing.

http://www.marine.usf.edu/PPBlaboratory ... aupin.html

we agree that EL NINO (ENSO) events are becoming more frequent and that the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is warming the earth's oceans. I never implied the oceans would continue to get warmer. But, I believe that the hot spots will become more common and widespread.

Certainly, but I don't think that the expansion of large warm pools is necessarily a problem in itself for reefs, which at the coral species level are capable of withstanding glacial-interglacial level climate change. My guess, and I am qualifying my statement with the word guess, that top-down fisheries, disease epidemics, ocean acidification etc. etc. are a much more iminent threat than surface water warming.

As far as parking spaces are concerned, you are welcome to mine (it is about 5 blocks from the FWRI building).

Ah, I was referring to the stretch of parking lot in front of CMS on the peninsula. I'm in the lab writing this right now.

 

[PeterIMA]

To my USF neighbour,

Graduate students are scientists. I am interested to learn more about your research on coral reefs.

Peter