Cruel to catch fish + aquatic animals?

[Paul_MTS]

very well put fishdan

 

[raindream]

I do not believe taking any fish or any animal for that matter from the wild is the right thing to do. What if we all took native birds, snakes, roo's, wild animals or fish are just that...wild....leave them in their natural environment to breed so that we continue to have 'wild' creatures.

 

[LoveMyOscar]

...

 

[Paul_MTS]

I do not believe taking any fish or any animal for that matter from the wild is the right thing to do. What if we all took native birds, snakes, roo's, wild animals or fish are just that...wild....leave them in their natural environment to breed so that we continue to have 'wild' creatures.

Taking native animals out of the wild as pets is totally obscene unless your a breeding program etc

Although not all organisations know what there doing...i.e RSPB- They have a reserve around here that they have been trying to breed a type of bird on for over a year and my dad is a member to a gun club who bought a big section of back waters (also where RSPB are), they do alot of conservation work aswell and with this season they have had several breeding partners of the same bird all with offspring kind of giving the RSPB the 2 finger salute!! The RSPB had been trying to stop the club from shooting it and gernerally getting in the way.

I think keeping things like snakes isn't particularly good really as no one who keeps them can give them a big enough ammount of room for them to move around in, you always see the snake curled up in a corner or on some deco then foods just plonked in front off them and barely have to move.

 

[squidlips]

i catch them for a living in aust . here i recon i save a lot of fish from a sure death ither paracitic or drying up waters birds and predators . i save ass many as i can so you lovely people can enjoy and hopefull live a longer life in your aqua... we are concerned no about the caintoads elimenating our fish populations. i have my fingers crossed the fish are smart enuf to spit out the eggs and tadpoles cos they tast foul . but there will be soooo many that i think our fish will have no food and less oxygen . oh me oh my woy can we do . sigh

 

[plecoperson]

didnt I make it clear that I know the first animals/ fish came from somewhere? in case I didnt, I KNOW THEY DID!

My point is, as so many fish are now captive bred, why take them from the wild?


To Paul: None of my fish have been taken directly from the wild, as the suppliers of the pet shop where I work and buy all my fish only supply captive bred.

I keep lots of pets. to this I say:

what would happen if my guinea pig/dog/budgie/hamster/fish were dumped in the wild. would they be able to survive? find food, shelter? most animals in the wild rely on their mothers to teach them how to survive - now, im not aware that my guinea pig's parent came from the wild, so could she teach it to survive? I think not.

come on everyone, dump your pets in the wild as all pets are wild animals.

"So if you have pets of any kind you are directly responsible for taking an animal out of it natural environment. Granted it may not have been directly taken out of the wild for you to enjoy, but it was somewhere along the lines."

how can I be "directly respnsible" for taking my pets from the wild? all my pets are in one way or another, rescued. is a rescue centre the animal's natural environment?

btw, paul, you contradict yourself - first you say that its fine to steal fish from the wild, then you say that its not.

plus, most snakes found in homes are the types who do not naturally have a large area of territory.

 

[Paul_MTS]

Of course house pets won't survive in the wild as they have been domesticated for our enjoyment but at some point someones said oh that wild animal looks like a nice pet lets look after it and so on until it becomes a household name/pet.

Also with the native animals things I meant things that you can't take care for in your living room like birds of prey that people steal or turtles for instance. Small fish they can have a better life in a tank are a different matter.

and the point that your fish are tank bred, there still from the wild at some point in the family tree!! so you raise your fish, fish where taken from the wild to reproduce.

Ok...i don't nowt about snakes anyways

 

[FishDan]

No one said that "all pets are wild animals". What was said is that at some point, they were. Keeping pets is a direct indication you support removing an animal from the wild and caring for it. No you didn't go and get your dog from the wilds, or your cat, or your hamster. The point is that at some point in the past every animal that is kept in the home was a wild animal that someone removed from it's natural habitat, where, at the time, it could take care of itself without man's help. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that everyone should goout into the woods and pick up a pet, but my point is still valid; Keeping any pet supports the removal, now or in the past, of the animal from its natural habitat.

Regarding fish, if possible I agree it's probably better to buy captive bred fish than removing them from the wild, just due to the fact that the fish are probably better suited to the aquarium and are likely to be less fragile. But not all fish sold in the trade are available as captive bred, so if you want a specific type of fish, wild is the only way you will get them. Catching wild fish should also be done non-destructively, harming neither the fish nor the environment they are being taken from.

\Dan

 

[David]

IMO, keeping wild caught fish is much better and more natural than aquarium bred fish, (unless the aquarium bred fish has been bred so that it retains much of it's natural characteristics) which may have lost much of their original looks and characteristics do to constant selective breeding. Also there are many fish that it is simply impossible/very hard to breed in captivity, so where are you going to get those? (ex. bala shark, clown loach, etc..). In conclusion, if you want to have an aquarium that perfectly or at least very closely mimics a small part of an ecosystem or natural environment (which is pretty much the only thing you should be doing, as keeping fish in unnatural conditions is just wrong), then the way to go is wild caught fish, not the fancy long-finned inbred fish that have been bred and raised in captivity, and can barely swim much less survive for extended periods of time (ex. lionhead goldfish, butterfly discus and bettas and other fish that have been bred to have unnaturally long fins (or unnaturally short ones) which make it difficult for them to do what they do best: act like a fish.

 

[FishDan]

IMO, keeping wild caught fish is much better and more natural than aquarium bred fish, (unless the aquarium bred fish has been bred so that it retains much of it's natural characteristics) which may have lost much of their original looks and characteristics do to constant selective breeding.

I don't agree with this statement on it's face. There are plenty of "purebred" fish available. Not all fish are "hybridized" or selectively bred, so this reasoning is poor, at best.

Also there are many fish that it is simply impossible/very hard to breed in captivity, so where are you going to get those? (ex. bala shark, clown loach, etc..).

I do agree with this. There are plenty of fish that we keep that have not been bred in captivity.

In conclusion, if you want to have an aquarium that perfectly or at least very closely mimics a small part of an ecosystem or natural environment (which is pretty much the only thing you should be doing, as keeping fish in unnatural conditions is just wrong),

Looking at your signature it is my opinion you are not keeping fish that "perfectly" or even "very closely" mimics a small part of the natural environment of your fish. I contend that probably upwards of 95% of fish keepers do not. Our aquariums are all "overstocked" in relation to what is found in nature. You don't have many fish, but you have too many fish for mimicing nature. I doubt that there would be that many different fish in a comparable volume of "wild" water. The mear act of keeping an aquarium is a violation of the principle of "mimicing" nature. In nature fish have unlimited area to swim in, in the aquarium they do not. We are "simulating" nature, at the very best. In some ways we are grossly unable to provide "natural" habitats. Most of us are unable to provide a "real" diet to the fish. Granted the foods we have available for the fish may be "better" (ie more nutritionally sound all in one type of food) than nature, even feeding flake, live, frozen or "natural" (cucummbers or lettuce for example). We can't or don't simulate weather all that well (we mostly keep our tanks at the same temp day and night, year round). We don't simulate rain or snow or hot sun. Any of these things can be good for or dangerous to our fish, but they are all part of nature.

then the way to go is wild caught fish, not the fancy long-finned inbred fish that have been bred and raised in captivity, and can barely swim much less survive for extended periods of time (ex. lionhead goldfish, butterfly discus and bettas and other fish that have been bred to have unnaturally long fins (or unnaturally short ones) which make it difficult for them to do what they do best: act like a fish.

I reiterate my earlier statement that not all captive bred fish are hybridized.

I still think that if possible you should try to get captive bred fish, but I also don't that it's cruel (in and of itself) to remove fish from the wild, again, so long as the method is not harmful or destructive to the fish or environment.

This is just my opinion and reasons behind it.

\Dan

 

[Paul_MTS]

I don't mind as long as the fish aren't caught curely as I'ved seen a docu on how some people catch them and it's just wrong. I prefer the thought of them being carefuly caught in nets.

It was the Really Wild Show and I can't rember where but for there living people swam under water and squirted doses of water down syonide (sp) to stun the fish, although the mixture maybe right for the fish they caught it would kill alot of smaller fish and coral life in the area.

another eay they did it was to set throw bombs in the water to stun the fish but this destroys the corals and again will kill to many fish and ones they don't want.

I also don't like the way especially goldfish have been bred so they have big tails frankly I think most of the man bred goldfish look ugly and any butterfly fin bred fish don't look right, like butterfly koi, they look ridiculous.