Ethical Considerations for Keeping Octopus in Captivity

[DHyslop]

is that sufficient to maintain my reputation for "walls of text," Dan?

Once again you trumped my effort. A mere two paragraphs takes me a half hour: you could partition Germany in that time :)

[cthulhu77]

The two examples I mentioned are in no way different...they are mirrors of what we can see in regards to the wild importation of cephalopods.

There is NO reason to import some species, other than as "crank" items.

We don't have even a modicum of experience with bimacs so far, and yet, the new arrivals are being snatched up as fast as they arrive. Two importers in town here are actively looking for more wonderpuss to fill orders that they have.

Are you seriously tryiing to tell me that there is no impact from this? Where does this end? Haven't you listened to Dr. O'Shea? Haven't you watched the news?

People, if you really care for cephs, (or any living animal for that matter) we have got to wake up and smell the coffee.


There is nothing wrong with collecting from a sustainable population...to a point. Thales is completely correct that legislation is the key to this. Problem= people don't want to hear it.

We don't want to hear that you won't be able to eat fish in 2040. Your children will never have a tuna fish sandwich that is safe to eat, even if tuna still exist.

Are we honestly justifiable in keeping cephs in captivity?

Yes, I believe we are.

They may well become the foodstuffs of tomorrow, with a fast reproduction rate and quick life cycle. (personally, can't stand the taste...would rather eat two legged mutton)

But, you have to question whether or not it is responsible to keep them in captivity, especially those of unknown population amounts.

[cthulhu77]

Had a depressing conversation with an animal wholesaler/importer yesterday...it sounds like wild ceph imports are going to reach an all-time high this year, the demand keeps on growing and growing, but the lack of education on the part of the purchasers is disturbing.

Be sure to tell people at your lfs about Tonmo, with Thales, Colin, Nancy, and Carol on board, at least the new stuff will have a chance at life, and maybe we can start to puzzle out some of the gaps we are missing in octopus care.

[DHyslop]

There's no reason to import any octopus, really. From mercatoris to briareus to bimacs pretty much any reasonable pet octo is available domestically. Compare the experiences with these animals versus imported "brown" and "bali" octopuses! The only import that anyone seems to have much luck with is A. aculeatus.

Even cuttlefish don't need much in the way of imports--Rich and Jennifer have demonstrated that you can get a whole lot of babies from a handful of imported eggs.

I work for an aquarium service company with a retail store in New England--when they first found out about my ceph fetish I was told that I was the only customer they had who they would suggest an octopus for, because I'm one of the only ones who would give it daily attention. Its not the panacea, but there is a lot of responsibility at the retail-end not to sell or order anything the customer asks for.

Dan

[tonmo]

Greg, good point. I know we want to provide a TONMO.com flyer for LFS's to give to their ceph-buying customers, kind of like, "here, take this flyer, visit this site to give and get support and guidance" -- I will try to post this soon, for anyone who can help spread the word.

[robyn]

Quoting Monty, from the wall of text:

I'm not sure how to assign even back-of-the-envelope numbers to this: it means that the population can theoretically bounce back rapidly from a small population to a large one, particularly since they have a short lifetime to reproductive age. However, it also means that removing adults or near-adults from the breeding population can have a very rapid impact on the reproductive capacity of the whole species, and also narrows the gene pool. One thing I'm pretty sure it means is that collection of hatchlings is much less likely to have an impact on the wild population than collection of adults, since the survival rate for a hatchling is very low anyway..

There is an emerging branch of mathematical ecology attempting to answer exactly these sorts of questions. From memory I think its called elasticity analyses. Basically all the population parametres (hatching success, mortaility in each year or each month, probability of surviving to reproductive age, probability of reproducing given survival to maturity etc.) are plugged into a model and it outputs those factors that will have the greatest impact on survival and population growth. The downside is that they require at least ball-park knowledge of each parametre, something which I imagine is lacking for many cephs.

However I think there are some papers out there comparing r and k selection strategies (in fish, I suspect) and elasticities of adult versus juvenile mortality. Although there's no substitute for knowledge of the species at hand, we can make some good guesses using data for animals with similar life histories.

I think somewhere there is an excellent example analysis on whales (extreme k-selected), that shows a population crash 20-30 years after high juvenile mortality. Slightly OT, but interesting stuff. (if you're a massive nerd like me, that is...)

[corw314]

Being an experienced and responsible Ceph owner for many years, I feel I want to "rescue" animals I see for sale cause I know with me they have a fighting chance of living a good life in captivity. I think that is an awesome idea educating your LFS about Tonmo and directing future ceph owners here for guidance.

[Nancy]

Having a TONMO.com brochure or flyer is a good idea. I've even thought of business card with the TONMO name and website address on it that could be given to ceph purchasers. If material like this was printable at home, we could print out copies and distribute them locally. Might give us a chance to talk with the LFS owner, too.

Even when given our website address, not all octo purchasers bother to log on, unfortunately.

Greg, what species are they importing, and from which areas?

I know of two LFSs in the Dallas area that want to move in the direction of the rare and exotic (fish and other inverts, as well as cephs), so this might be a trend.

Nancy

[Thales]

I think a flyer is a good idea, I think it would be even better with a bunch of facts on it. I also think trying to make relationships with the online saltwater communities might be a good idea - many aren't really going to want to send people to TONMO, but its worth a shot. I am an admin on reefs.dot org, and could prolly get a ceph forum started with a post with a link to tonmo and I think it would be easier to get with a reciprocal link and reciprocal forum.
Also, connecting with the online sellers of cephs and having them put a link to TONMO with there cephs for sale might be good too.

The downside is that most stores or sites that are selling cephs are not going to want to be connected to any site that says 'don't by a ceph' because they want to sell cephs. Wonderpus gets even stickier - Atlantis isn't going to want to link to us because they sell most of the wunderpus in this area.



Nancy - the cephs are mostly coming from indo, but they are coming from just about any place that has cephs.

[cthulhu77]

I agree...a pamphlet of some sort would be great.

That still skirts the issue of "is this ethical" ? Yes, reality dictates that we are going to see an upsurge in cephalopods in captivity, especially when TFH hits the shelves. How do we address this?


Thales, with the other thread being closed down by Colin, I will try to address your concerns on this one.

[cthulhu77]

"In your experience, why did people stop buying the boas? Was it because the market was flooded, because people wanted to protect the wild populations, or for some other reason or reasons?"

Animals are only sold when they bring a profit to the importer/wholesaler.

In the case of the Hogg Isle boas, the market was flooded quickly, and the wild population decimated. Protecting the wild populations would mean just that Protecting The Wild Populations...this can not be done by captive breeding. It needs to be done at the field level, unfortunately, too late for those pretty little snakes.
I would like to see it not happen to the octopus species.

[Colin]

Just for information -

The closed thread can be found here...

http://www.tonmo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7838

Colin

[Thales]

"In your experience, why did people stop buying the boas? Was it because the market was flooded, because people wanted to protect the wild populations, or for some other reason or reasons?"

Animals are only sold when they bring a profit to the importer/wholesaler.

In the case of the Hogg Isle boas, the market was flooded quickly, and the wild population decimated. Protecting the wild populations would mean just that Protecting The Wild Populations...this can not be done by captive breeding. It needs to be done at the field level, unfortunately, too late for those pretty little snakes.
I would like to see it not happen to the octopus species.

Thanks Greg.
I thought you making a connection of the end of collection of the Hog Isle Boa with boycotting a 'zebras' to end their collection collection, but since the boas dropped in price because of market saturation, it looks like I misunderstood.

The boas and the Galaxy rasbora are examples of what might/prolly will happen with the 'zebras'. I agree, and am saddened by the prospect. International action is needed on a level that overwhelms my mind. Its taken 20-30 years to start to see a positive trend away from collection of fish with cyanide, so I am not sure what to do here. Perhaps raising money to fund field research would be a good place to start.

[cthulhu77]

That, Sir, is a great idea. I wonder if we could do a fund drive here on Tonmo for some field research? It would be great to meld the keeping of cephs in captivity and the exploration of the wild 'pods into one whole ball of wax.

Besides, I would like to see a photo of you with a zebra octopus on your head. :)

[DHyslop]

Besides, I would like to see a photo of you with a zebra octopus on your head. :)

Just as long as its not about to be eaten!

[cthulhu77]

Just as long as its not about to be eaten!

They taste like Orange Roughy.

[sorseress]

They taste like Orange Roughy.

How would you know? Hmmmm?

[cthulhu77]

O'Shea sent me some.

[monty]

There is an emerging branch of mathematical ecology attempting to answer exactly these sorts of questions. From memory I think its called elasticity analyses.

I'd be quite interested in references and recommendations for particular papers... I'm hoping to get some time to do a google scholar search for this stuff, but if you have some specific recommendations, that's also good, particularly if you know some that are good for a "well-read intellectual, but ignorant computer scientists who hasn't taken too much hardcore biology and had to pick up a lot of terminology on the street" level reader like myself.

This also seems like the sort of thing that Fugisawas Sake would like, but he hasn't been around much lately.

I should also clarify a bit: I didn't in any way mean to criticize the conclusion that "zebras" shouldn't be collected and imported, certainly not in the overzealous, irresponsible, and unregulated (and greed-driven) manner that people are describing. I just am wary of over-extrapolating the details, but it's pretty damn clear that the current practices are unethical, unacceptable, and unreasonable.

My only intended point is that collecting endangered animals is not a "one-size fits all" problem, and it's the sort of thing where frequently there is a great deal of complexity, so to try to address it sometimes requires a lot of open-minded-cynicism, so to speak. But it's clear that the "zebras" were doing a lot better before a bunch of jerks started to spray cyanide at them to make a quick fortune selling them to rich idiots in American LFS stores, so stopping that seems like a great idea. My comments are mostly in the theoretical domain of "will they bounce back" and "in what ways is this similar to or different from other examples." I understand that Greg sees a lot of similarities between them and other "exotic pet" animals, and certainly in terms of the "human side" of the behavioral and economic examples, I agree, but in terms of reproduction, ecology, and whatnot, I think it's intellectual thin ice to say that a ceph that probably breeds a large brood about once a year is going to respond to pressures in a way similar to boas or tasmanian tigers. However, there's no doubt that if these collectors remove a large fraction of the wild population, it will be an unacceptably horrible thing for the population, so it's the details, not the big picture, that I'm wanting to get into.

[Jean]

Interestingly the sale of cephs is not common in NZ. I can honestly say I have never seen one for sale in any pet store (or aquarium store) I have been in. I confess I actively discourage visitors to the aquarium who ask about keeping them, this is mainly because they would have to catch their own and it is difficult to distiguish between midgets which could conceivably be kept in a home aquarium and a juvenile common (which gets HUGE). Our aim as a public aquarium is to enthuse people about the marine environment and it's inhabitants (in situ!) and to raise their awareness about some of the issues surrounding it......this is why we hold marine animals (and go through an extremely painful ethics approval process every year ). We do of course provide information and help to home aquarists if they call with a problem and we take in and nurse (or euthanise ) marine animals brought in by the public (we are a bird rescue centre in the event of oil spill). We also run aquarium technology classes.

BTW don't get me started on orange roughy..........if ever there was a fish not suited to commercial exploitation thats it!!!!

J