I let this thread brew for a while before I said anything, I bounced it off some other people... thanks
There are a lot of great points here and it is the necessary evil. This is exactly the kind of stuff we should be examining here and exactly the sort of stuff that a fledgling side of home aquaculture needs to address.
I haven’t been very active on the TONMO.com forums for a while now. Why? Quite simply because I don't keep cephalopods anymore.
As someone who has a purpose built heated shed with more than forty aquariums, surely at least one tank could have an octopus or cuttlefish? The answer is no.
I bought my last octopus in 2003 and in 2005 I took 6 baby Sepia bandensis which were hatched from eggs by a fellow TONMO.com member.
In 2003 I tried to order two Octopus vulgaris through the local fish importer, at which I was an employee of at the time. The exporter actually sent two blue rings instead! That pretty much was the last straw.
During my main flow of keeping octopuses I probably ordered somewhere in the region of 30 over 3 years. A dozen arrived DOA. Some were full grown dwarves and died within a couple of weeks. Others lived a few months. I also had attempts at rearing baby octopuses from gravid females who laid eggs in my tanks.
Point is, now I DON'T think it’s worth it and would rather that the octopuses stayed in the sea. I am not taking any moral high ground here because I still keep lots and lots of tropical fish, probably in the region of 100 species or more. Some of which are very rare in the trade. BUT at least I am breeding these fish and it's somewhere in the region of 3 or 4 new species per month.
To clarify, I can still buy fish at trade prices because I worked in the trade for some ten years or so and when I buy fish, I buy them 10 or more at a time. This means I am fairly assured of getting both sexes. My aim, as it always is, is to breed the fish. I now supply local shops and my importer with about twelve species of fish exclusively. The importer DOES NOT import those particular species from the wild anymore!
So basically that is a 10% success rate. So far... I have another 3 or 4 species that *should* breed in March.
This isn't meant to sound bigheaded, but I hold a LOT of clout with my local shops and importers. If I was at the LFS or importers and he ordered a zebra octopus and I turned it down and told him why, he wouldn't order them again. This isn't just a guess by the way. It has held true on several occasions; even just last week when all these ‘zebras’ started to appear again.
I don’t order them. I don’t buy them when I do see them. I offer advice freely and always point to this website when I can. Is this being morally strong or acting purely in the animal’s best interest and therefore also the hobby’s? Greg’s Hogg Island Boa is a good example of when things go wrong, you could also look at red ear terrapins or problems associated with certain importers bringing in species of ‘monster’ fish like Pangassius (adult at 6 feet), Phractocephalus (adult at 6 feet), Psuedoplatystoma (adult at 6 feet), Arapaima (adult at 9 feet) and so on and so on… They sell these things at sizes of 4” in length! Whatever you may think, you can vote with your wallet and not buying these animals DOES make a difference. Let me point you to the case of dyed and tattooed fish in the UK… it is now so well publicised and frowned upon by the public through education of the barbaric practice, that there are hardly any stockist who would dare to sell them!!! Let alone the recent craze of tail docking fish from the far-east for the sake of vanity! Imagine taking your pet fish out of the water and with no anaesthetic, cutting off its tail! It has had articles published in magazines about how you can do this at home! See here…
Fishkeeping News - Practical Fishkeeping disturbing pictures warning!!!
(edit: direct link no longer functional)
Some points on capture and exporting.
Richard did briefly describe the scenario in regards how animals make it to us as per Tony’s question but I think it glossed over a lot of issues…
E.g. many people who capture elusive animals like octopus still use cyanide or other chemicals. They basically dive down to an octopus’ den and squirt from a bottle into the den until it comes dashing out and they catch it with a net.
This practise is still widespread in SE Asia and well documented online, just Google it! It is banned in many countries for obvious reasons but still rife. I wonder how many ‘mystery’ cephalopod deaths could be attributed to chemical capture? A hell of a lot I’d guess!!!
Then, these normally small, family businesses have to keep the animal alive for a while until the exporter can arrive to collect it. They basically keep them in anything that will hold water. I have seen it for myself and it is pretty much light years away from the tanks we have set up and ranges from plastic buckets to old rusty bathtubs… what does metal do to cephs? Kills them.
So a collector might have to keep the animal for a week or two in substandard conditions until the exporter picks them up, then they get moved to the exporter’s facility. They might sit there for another couple of weeks until a particular order arrives for that species. During this time the animals are rarely, if ever, fed. That is because a 20 – 40 hour flight to the UK or USA might be less fatal if the animal doesn’t defecate in its own water… better not feed it then, eh? Also bear in mind that 90% of a cephalopod’s respiration produces ammonia and that being in a small bag for 20 – 40 hours is sure going to produce a lot of ammonia! Oh yeah, and they might also produce ink in their bag if they get stressed, again leading to DOAs. Really, what chance to these poor buggers have?
I have always been 100% behind the selling of captive bred stock so we can cut out the whole wild caught scenario. You won’t get any better a thrill from keeping a Wunderpus than a CB bimaculoides! Better yet, buy them as eggs as in the case of Sepia!
Now, once the animal eventually reaches its way to the country it’s going to, it is checked by customs where necessary and acclimatised to a new tank. In most cases the octopus is on sale as of the next day, or even the same day in some cases! Then off to a LFS, then from there, having been acclimatised yet again, on to a third tank in a buyer’s home. The animal may or may not have been cyanide caught and has probably gone through at least three different tanks in as many days! It might not have been fed for several weeks? Is the trade in marine animals fair and ethical? No, pretty damn far from it!
I think that the following statement ’The cephs that came in last week were packed very well, and I think the ceph mortality (4 of 10 cuttles DOA, 1 more DAA, and 1 'common' occy out of 6 and no 'zebras' out of 2)’ is appalling statistics. So out of 18 imported cephalopods only 12 lasted more than a day? How long did the rest survive? What killed the others? What lesson was learned there? What would be termed a success? Half living a month? 2 Months? 1 still alive after 6 months?
Dr Roy Caldwell said, ‘Once these octopus have been collected and removed from their home environment, they have zero fitness - they are evolutionarily dead.’ This is my sentiment exactly and in the last thread I asked, ‘what is the point in keeping them?’ They cannot be bred. A gravid female’s eggs cannot be reared. Nothing can be learned about their behaviour in captivity. What’s the point other than having a soon to be dead, but kinda cool in the meantime pet?
So, what about the wild ‘zebra’ population dynamics? Well, no one knows; fact! Anything from here on is just wild guesses. I won’t guess. Despite how this may appear I am not actually against keeping all species of cephalopod in aquaria. There is nothing wrong with captive bred stock, and I don’t have any problem with captive farmed stock (wild animals which lay eggs and the eggs are hatched and raised in captivity. I don’t even have a problem with species like briareus, bimaculoides or aculeatus which seem to be locally abundant. But when the experts are giving us warnings I think we should take heed regarding those species.
The UK is currently taking huge steps forward in protecting animals under the care of people. This includes farm animals, working animals and pets both vertebrates and invertebrates. I think that over the next few years it will make a difference. Legislation is needed to protect our interests and the interests of the animals we are interested in.
Animal Welfare Act 2006
Animal Welfare Act 2006