The fish species themselves were not under threat of extinction, he added, though "probably, in 50 years, there's going to be so few reefs. But if you throw a cloud of cyanide over a reef to stun all the fish and that coral is bleaching, that reef is dead. "A bleached coral has a high possibility of recovering if there's no other pollution stress around it. All through the Indo-Pacific, corals are bleaching," said Downs. "Cyanide fishing is very destructive to coral reefs and coral reefs are under a huge amount of climate change stress at the moment. "The 'Dories', the blue tangs, the ones I purchased, all had, except for one, very high levels" of poisonous residue, said Downs.Īnd those "did not survive beyond nine days after purchase."īlue tangs are sold for aquariums for up to 150 euros ($170) apiece, said Downs.īut worse than customer deception, the practice of cyanide fishing is devastating for the coral reefs that the popular pets come from. The team had tested over 100 fish, including blue tangs-of which an estimated 300,000 are traded every year, according to a recent report.įriday's release of Pixar's "Finding Dory", an animated film about a forgetful blue tang, will likely boost demand for aquarium specimens of the tropical fish, a report says Tests on European pet fish will follow next year. The results would be similar in other countries, given that most of the world's tropical aquarium fish come from the same suppliers, said Downs. More than half of saltwater aquarium fish the researchers bought from US-based pet stores and wholesalers, tested positive for cyanide residue, said the report. you squirt cyanide onto a fish or it goes into this cloud of cyanide and it is stunned," Downs told AFP by telephone. One of the most common, though illegal, ways of capturing the colourful creatures is to use cyanide. The film's predecessor, "Finding Nemo", had seen more than a million clownfish taken from tropical reefs, said Craig Downs of the Haereticus Environmental Laboratory in Virginia, a research body which worked on the report with conservation group For the Fishes. Friday's release of Pixar's "Finding Dory", an animated film about a forgetful blue tang, will likely boost demand for aquarium specimens of the tropical fish, and fuel the poisonous practice used to trap them, said a report.
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