Originally Posted by
Caesra For the most part, I agree with most of your stances, just not necessarily the reasoning.
This part is particularly curious to me. I say that, because the reasoning, the logic, is what drives my stances. That, and my experiences as a breeder. Between the Orchids and the African Cichlids, I've seen enough of what works, and how badly things can go wrong, to have shaped my viewpoint on the matter of Designer fish and Hybrids.
For example, walking into a fishroom where a guy had 7 (or 17?) species of
Aulonocara in a 75 gallon tank and he told me they all bred true and with the appropriate females - I knew enough long before then to know that was absolute BS, and that I should not buy a single fish from such a careless breeder as the odds were extremely high if not 100%, that the babies would all be hybrids. I was NOT going to get what I was being sold, and paying for. And the breeder who I KNOW is passing of Percularis (hybrid perc X ocellaris) as straight up Ocellaris, intentionally - tell me how that doesn't screw someone up who buys these mis-ID'd fish and starts trying to breed "Ocellaris" out of them.
It is this type of mentality, which I have seen many times in the freshwater breeding crowd, and see it creeping into the saltwater world, that tells me it is vitally important for Marine Breeders to set a standard, define some priorities so we don't repeat the mistakes of others, to be a bit self policing and adamant about ensuring transparency and, for lack of a better term, truly encourage if not socially enforce responsible breeding (and to define that, breeding that does not harm the fish both directly but also in a conservation mindset, nor harm the efforts of other breeders).
And yes, conservation matters, preservation of natural forms matters because large scale commercial production is never going to do the niche fish. The big guys have said "we can't be profitable without our designer fish, we can't do research without designer fish". The marketplace, which to a great extent is new and relatively uninformed consumers, has said "we won't pay for a nice ocellaris what we'll pay for a SnowOnyx". This is why you don't see 55 species of Dottybacks coming out of ORA, and why the 45 species they don't do will have to be done by hobbyists, part timers, specialists, if we expect to have them in the hobby for future aquarists to enjoy. Every time someone tries to make the next Indigo Dottyback, that's wasted energy that could be put towards nailing down something like the Orange Peel or Red Dot instead. The admitted problem right now remains..if you DO the Orange Peel, who's buying it?
So put in the context of the MBI, I personally DO have a bias against encouraging hybridization and ornamentalism, and am in favor of the preservation of natural biodiversity. I believe that given all the circumstances, given the big picture, and given the long term forecasts, for the hobbyist where profit is not the only or primary motive, it would be foolish to encourage breeding that is largely motivated by profit as the main reward, at the expense of conservation and the efforts of fellow breeders. As well, it would be irresponsible to not speak up, even if that means some people don't like what's being said. Still, there are ways in which the two camps CAN coexist, but that's another post for another day/month/year. I don't want to give away my entire new talk in the span of a few MBI forum posts
Originally Posted by
Caesra It was my hope to play devil's advocate and cause a rethinking of some of the questions that I seem to reread and create contradictions I come across
Mind giving some examples of these contradictions?
Originally Posted by
Caesra I have not had time to read through much of this last magazine, but I do look foward to reading the many articles, including yours, regarding these topics.
I haven't had a full chance to read through either. I have however, read Daniel Knop's generalized article on the topic of breeding. And I have to say, he provides an excellent high level look at the issues at play from a broad, all encompassing viewpoint of humankind's interactions with nature. Knop's article is not really an op-ed, it's more of an overview. While I have not personally fact-checked what he's written (nor do I intend to), I know enough of what he's talking about to say he brings some interesting examples to the table for consideration while trying to remain ambiguous about any personal bias (although if I were to discern one, I would suspect, based on his editorial at the beginning of the magazine, he and I probably share very similar viewpoints on the topic at hand).