“We’ve got to shrink the flavors of fishes available to hobbyists.”
This is not what I expected to hear from ornamental fish trade veteran Tim Haywood when we connected to discuss the aquarium industry. It’s rare to come across businessfolk calling for a constriction of their market.
Then again, Haywood is no ordinary industry insider. He’s a man determined to confront what he calls the aquarium trade’s “gray areas” so the hobby he loves can become fit for the 21st century.
Haywood comes across as someone who’s aware that the honesty required to fix his beloved hobby also risks causing damage by opening it up to criticism. So he speaks frankly but carefully when he tells me about these gray areas: the often hidden tolls of the trade, such as the negative effects of intensive captive breeding on fishes’ welfare, and the deaths of millions of fish and other aquariumorganisms each year so people can enjoy watching the colorful survivors in their home tanks around the world.
These are problems few people see or understand, despite the aquarium trade’s massive scope and ubiquity around the world — and particularly in the United Kingdom.
To continue reading this story, please follow this link to The Revelator, which originally published the article.
Image via Aidan Sammons / Flickr, cropped to 1024×613, licensed under CC BY 2.0
