While I do support the idea of aqua cultured corals and captive bred fish etc... I was wondering if these may not present problems on their own.
I recall watching a program about a year ago on the salmon farms on the West coast of Canada and was surprised to learn that many scientists consider these farms to be doing more damage that catching the wild fish.
There were a number of problems cited including disease going from the fish farms to the wild populations, the captive fish escaping as well as the amount of waste in a small area (if I recall correctly it said that the bottom 2 or three feet were now fish crap where it used to have biological diversity it now was now effectively "dead.") Many of the fish were brought in from the Atlantic coast and were more or less different from the native fish in that they grew faster and out competed them when they escaped. The government had originally said that even if they escaped they would not breed and were proven wrong as a larger percentage each year are showing signs of genetic contamination.
While this is not being critical of the "clam farms" or coral farms whose practices I know very little about, I was just wondering if there are any known risks in aqua culturing animals where they may do harm to the wild reef?
I recall watching a program about a year ago on the salmon farms on the West coast of Canada and was surprised to learn that many scientists consider these farms to be doing more damage that catching the wild fish.
There were a number of problems cited including disease going from the fish farms to the wild populations, the captive fish escaping as well as the amount of waste in a small area (if I recall correctly it said that the bottom 2 or three feet were now fish crap where it used to have biological diversity it now was now effectively "dead.") Many of the fish were brought in from the Atlantic coast and were more or less different from the native fish in that they grew faster and out competed them when they escaped. The government had originally said that even if they escaped they would not breed and were proven wrong as a larger percentage each year are showing signs of genetic contamination.
While this is not being critical of the "clam farms" or coral farms whose practices I know very little about, I was just wondering if there are any known risks in aqua culturing animals where they may do harm to the wild reef?