Tuesday 23 March 2010

Marine aquaria and reef communities

New York Times has an article that looks at the effect of the growing popularity of marine aquaria on reef invertebrates. Unlike the freshwater aquarium trade, where captive-bred organisms dominate, the marine aquarium trade depends heavily on wild-caught fish and - more importantly, it would appear from this article - wild-caught inverts, which are important for maintaining the reef ecosystem. Since they play similar roles in nature as they do in the tank, overharvesting could have profound impacts on reef communities.