Revealing the Appetite of the Marine Aquarium Fish Trade: The Volume and Biodiversity of Fish Imported into the United States

Abstract

The aquarium trade and other wildlife consumers are at a crossroads forced by threats from global climate change and other anthropogenic stressors that have weakened coastal ecosystems. While the wildlife trade may put additional stress on coral reefs, it brings income into impoverished parts of the world and may stimulate interest in marine conservation. To better understand the influence of the trade, we must first be able to quantify coral reef fauna moving through it. Herein, we discuss the lack of a data system for monitoring the wildlife aquarium trade and analyze problems that arise when trying to monitor the trade using a system not specifically designed for this purpose. To do this, we examined an entire year of import records of marine tropical fish entering the United States in detail, and discuss the relationship between trade volume, biodiversity and introduction of non-native marine fishes. Our analyses showed that biodiversity levels are higher than previous estimates. Additionally, more than half of government importation forms have numerical or other reporting discrepancies resulting in the overestimation of trade volumes by 27%. While some commonly imported species have been introduced into the coastal waters of the USA (as expected), we also found that some uncommon species in the trade have also been introduced. This is the first study of aquarium trade imports to compare commercial invoices to government forms and provides a means to, routinely and in real time, examine the biodiversity of the trade in coral reef wildlife species.

Uncovering an obscure trade: Threatened freshwater fishes and the aquarium pet markets

“…Effective monitoring and regulation of the aquarium industry is constrained by lack of accurate, quantitative and un-biased information (Green, 2003;Smith et al, 2008;Murray et al, 2012;Rhyne et al, 2012a). Trade figures for aquarium fishes are often non-existent, or if available are frequently mis-reported due to the exclusion or misclassification of shipment records (Olivier, 2001) or through inappropriate estimates by the exporting and importing companies (Rhyne et al, 2012a).…”

“…Trade figures for aquarium fishes are often non-existent, or if available are frequently mis-reported due to the exclusion or misclassification of shipment records (Olivier, 2001) or through inappropriate estimates by the exporting and importing companies (Rhyne et al, 2012a). The practice of shipment reporting by weight or value means that the number of individuals in trade is difficult to quantify (Wood, 2001).…”

“…The practice of shipment reporting by weight or value means that the number of individuals in trade is difficult to quantify (Wood, 2001). In addition, the lack of species-specific recording represents an impediment to assessing the origin and number of individuals of wild-caught species (Schlaepfer et al, 2005;Smith et al, 2008;Rhyne et al, 2012a).…”

“…The aquarium fish trade is a large, biodiverse, global industry (Tlusty et al, 2013), worth around 15-30 billion US$ (Penning et al, 2009) and involving 5300 freshwater and 1802 marine fish (Hensen et al, 2010;Rhyne et al, 2012a). Ninety percent of the trade volume revolves around tropical freshwater fishes of which all but 10% are captive bred, and the remainder comprise of diverse wild-caught species (Olivier, 2001).…”

Ascidians as models for studying invasion success

“…Also, some of these species were introduced inadvertently as contaminants or "fellow travelers" with aquaculture species, and/ or on equipment transferred among local water bodies (Naylor et al 2001;De Silva et al 2009;Lin et al 2015). In addition, the live seafood/bait and aquarium trades have also become important vectors for biological invasions of marine NIS (e.g., Rhyne et al 2012). Mediated by these vectors, it is estimated that thousands of species are transported within and between oceans on any given day (Carlton and Gellar 1993).…”