Greenwire: For the estimated 700,000 saltwater aquarium tanks in the United States, it is not enough to just have a bubbly treasure chest and a plastic diver. Most owners are creating small-scale reef ecosystems, with living coral, anemones, shrimp, sea urchins, crabs and snails. The market for those creatures and other reef life is booming, especially among the licensed collectors in Florida.
But scientists warn that this kind of collecting could pose a threat to the real ecosystems. While collecting live coral has obvious ecological impact, researchers also say that removing invertebrates, which clean and control pests, could make the fishery unsustainable. Researchers say if the populations of invertebrate grazers and herbivores drop, the reef could get overwhelmed by algae.
Jessica McCawley, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, said collectors are a “special type of fisherman. They’re very concerned about the environment and the sustainability of the fishery.” Collectors point out that in their work, they have studied the flow of the invertebrate populations and are careful not to disturb the ecosystem.
There is no question that the Florida reef has changed in the past two decades, coinciding with the rise in reef tanks. In 1994, six species in the top 15 were collected and sold for their ecological roles. By 2007, that number was up to nine, including 700,000 turbonella snails and 2.4 million blue-legged crabs.
Reef tanks include home and office tanks, often with intricate displays by serious collectors or scientists. A paper in the open-access journal PLoS ONE earlier this year found that the number of organisms collected for tanks increased by about 13 percent per year between 1994 and 2007 as collectors sought a more genuine environment (Henry Fountain, New York Times, March 22). – JP