Deep pockets
Anyone spending time reading about reef aquariums must have noticed the more and more common reports about “rare” deep water fishes entering markets. The prices of these fishes are exceptionally high and more often than not do not correlate in anyway with fish’s beauty, size, interesting behavior or other qualities often associated with aquarium fishes. Actually, the only thing that seems to correlate with the price is the depth from which they were collected. I’m sure I’m not the only one wondering why anyone would pay very large amounts of money for a fish that is not in anyway more desirable than a fish costing 1/100th of the price.
People buying fishes that are distinguished only by their high price are called “collectors”. These people seem to treat their aquariums as a trophy cabinets and the animals living in it as a collectibles. To me it is clear that “hobbyists” like these are not as much interested in the biology or ecology of the animals and their environment as they are in “bragging rights” and competition with their peers. This must be one of the most idiotic motivations to keep live animals, for many reasons. Also, live animals are probably one of the worst items to collect. First of all, marine aquariums require a lot more work than does, say, a coin collection. Live animals will also die at some point so your investment is doomed no matter what you do, unlike for example with stamps. (Plus, the resale value is probably the same or, more likely, less than the original purchase price). Even used cars are better choice.
So why would you collect live animals just like some people collect books or stamps? Naturally people have many personal reasons and many collectors do it mostly for themselves, getting satisfaction from reaching self-imposed goals or learning and communicating with other similar minded people. To me, none of these reasons seem to drive the need to own very expensive “rare” fish, however.
It is very common to mock people who keep very dangerous animals like the notorious blue-ringed octopus. Most serious people consider these people as show-offs who are trying to attract attention and create a certain kind of superficial portrait of themselves. It is probably this same idea of getting recognition by buying fish costing thousands of dollars. The unfortunate fact is that you can buy visibility but not respect.
Ordinarily I couldn’t care less about how people spend their money. Actually, I’m usually happy or even excited for people who have the resources to purchase nice and desirable things for themselves. Especially if the item has something to do with the reef aquariums. So why do I care?
- People put their health at risk trying to catch these “collectibles”.
- Deep water animals should not be kept in a typical reef aquarium.
- These fishes are not collected by local people and provide no income to them.
- Focusing in these fishes will not improve the hobby in anyway. Introducing new affordable, beautiful and/or interesting fishes to market would. Deep water fishes will never be in reach of 99.99% marine aquarists because they will always be very expensive. There are plenty of beautiful fishes living in shallow waters that, for some reason, are never collected for trade.
- Ethics involving keeping live animals. In my opinion the reason you keep live animals counts.
- I can’t stand elitists.