Wholesaler Labels Aquaculture as Immoral!

The whole statement by Pacific Aqua Farms is extremely poorly written. It is unclear what exactly they mean. They use the term aquaculture incorrectly in the title of the article, and several times within it. Only once is aquaculture in quotations, and it is well into the article. I completely understand how people are interpreting the article differently.

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Based on that title it is understandable how anyone in the hobby could interpret the article as Pacific Aqua Farms being against true aquaculture.

I doubt many hobbyists would disagree with this statement. It is perfectly reasonable and would be an interest topic of conversation. Obviously, coral heads that have been broken up and sold as frags should never be labelled as aquacultured.

Again, they raise a perfectly reasonable issue/ethical dilemma in the above paragraph.

This is where the statement complete goes off the edge... it is not logical and, to me, shows a the writer of the article has his/her own interests at heart. I have a major issue with the writer referring to breaking up coral colonies as an aquaculture cottage industry... it is not aquaculture, period.

Edit: I also have an issue with the writers use of the word "your", but that is neither here not there

 

I just came across this article and wanted to give my 2cents. I've actually been to PAF and they have nice stuff, they also have maricultured corals. I think they were trying to say about the "aquacuture" is like "chop and shop" and a few stores here in SoCal has been doing that and selling them off as "aquacultured frags".

Oh yeah, newbie in this site.

 

It's definitely a confusing message at best. The part that really gets me is when they are outlining what aquaculture is and why people are doing it. In that part they even include the LFS who is using aquaculture. In our economy it is hard enough for a company that relies on discretionary income, but to say that trying to become more sustainable from within us just a strange message. I get that the exportation communities have helped our hobby from the start, but that doesn't mean we should continue to follow the same path to the destruction of our reefs. By speaking as if aquaculture as a whole is bad practice that they will not support, they are lumping together ora, quality marines reefhab, and other honorable companies that truly culture their corals to provide more resilient strains that are not an impact on the wild. They also condemn those who put in the time to culture corals that simply melt when taken from the wild. Take blue hornets for example. How many generations did we go through before they stopped melting? How many more would we have pulled from the wild for crazed zoa collectors if stronger strains would not have been aquaculture? Take a look at the fish that are now more commonly found as tank bred specimens. The amount of clownfish that have been bred in captivity alone is staggering and the people who made that possible deserve nothing less than applause. Perhaps they did mean something different than the message I thought that I read, but the holes in their message all just seem to add up to some other motives to me.

 

My signature doesn't seem to be working so I have to say I'm typing from Tapatalk so excuse my autocorrects lack of spelling and grammer knowledge.

 

I'm an idiot i was thinking mariculture the whole time

 

Lol that would be an interesting one as well. Maybe we should email and see how they feel about it.

 

Hmm..I left my thoughts on this topic, on the blog post. I noted about fish, but my stance is generally the same for coral.

 

Sorry for the dely in responding but here is my take on it. As for the key words:

Key word: Aquaculture
In this thread there seems to be great confusion with the definition of aquaculture. Mariculture is often confused with aquaculture. Mariculture is propagation in the ocean, often done on racks. Aquaculture involves propagation outside of the ocean.

PAF's history with working with Walt Smith really pushed for mariculture in Fiji long ago. Reason why is they wanted collections to be sustainable. The project in Fiji was copied all over in the area and is still being practiced today by many countries. PAF is certainly not against mariculture! They saw that the natives were not looking out for their future and they decided to educate them so that their resources were renewable.

You know the saying, "Give a man a fish you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." PAF taught them how to fish, but expanded on that by teaching them how to fish responsibly.

Key Word: Cottage industry
This more likely is a direct shot at aquaculture facilities here in the US who sell their corals with the pitch that it is more responsible to purchase from them. Is that really true? Those corals tend to be 10x smaller than maricultured pieces, no to mention that many of them are merely cut directly from maricultured pieces that were recently imported. Think about it. Why import a $20 maricultured piece, and sell it to a store for $30 who then sells it to a hobbyist for $60-100 when you could chop up a $20 maricultured piece into 10 pieces, sell them to stores as aquacultured for $20 each. This is happening here in the US. It appears that PAF is taking a stand at this and other similar practices by calling them out without truly calling them out. I am sure that some aquaculture facilities do not enter into these practices, but I can assure you that many do. Maybe not all the time but some of the time and that is for sure.

Key word: Outside native habitats
The above statement also suggest that they are not against aquaculture either so long as it is done in the native environment. Why would PAF make that statement. The fact that they have seen how they have touched and changed the lives of so many people by educating them on keeping collections sustainable definitely plays a part in their position. They fear that all they have done for those people will be lost if they are no longer able to export their resources. I ask you all to think. Is it better to tell those countries that they cannot earn money by exporting their resources or would it be more beneficial to teach them how to do it responsibly, so that they can continue to have that income for a lifetime and generations to follow.

In my opinion, we should teach them to fish to feed them for a lifetime!

 

I totally agree with this.:thumb_up:

 

IMO, you should have contacted them before writing the blog post basically asking others to effectively boycott their establishment. From reading the blog post and this thread it is painfully apparent that many including you were not aware that mariculture and aquaculture are not the same thing.