Colombia halts tetra exports

[Shane]

Received the below from an exporter friend in Bogota.
-Shane

DEAR FISH FRIENDS,
SORRY TO INFORM YOU THAT COLOMBIA CLOSE EXPORT FROM ALL CHARACIDAE (tetra) FAMILY FOR FISH PROTECTION. FROM THIS FAMILY WE CAN EXPORT SOME BOXES OF PARACHEIRODON AXELRODIE.
THIS CHARACIDAE FAMILY WE CAN EXPORT AGAIN UP 1 JANUARY 2011
ATTACH OUR NEW FISH STOCK.
BEST REGARDS
JOSE DARIO

JOSE DARIO CASTRO P.
MARINE BIOLOGIST, MBA, MBA
PETRO = PECES TROPICALES
pecest@etb. net.co
TEL. 0057 1 2676721 / 2672060
FAX. 0057 1 4154942
MOBILE 0057 315 3325313
BOGOTA, COLOMBIA

[wrasse]

Seems to me its a good thing, managing their natural resources.
Let the fish have their spawning season and replenish their numbers. Its only for 2 months.
I wonder why they stop at tetras only.

[sidguppy]

it does make sense

let's hope they also stop with the deforestation for the same pertiod, but I don't think that will happen

because somehow governments use a sop like this to buy off their concience with the concept of being eco-friendly, while at the same time agreeing with wholesale habitat destruction
but fish hobbyists are only small fry; beef-, oil- and hardwoodlumber company's are the big honcho's; they belong to the invisible crowd who actually run the show and hold the political puppet strings.

still, it's better than nothing

[MatsP]

Sounds a bit like what my father used to say about the company he worked for, "Saving on pens and paper, but management is shoveling out money by the bucket". So, they stop export of Tetra, but keep destroying the habitat.

--
Mats

[Mike_Noren]

They're learning. If no one knows that the species even exist, no one will complain when the environment is destroyed. Plus it lets the government pretend like its "doing something" about biodiversity loss.

It really, really, annoys me when environmental organizations play along with this crap. No single species of freshwater fish has ever been extinguished or even threatened by collection for the aquarium trade, they're all extinguished and threatened by habitat destruction. A single dam in a single tropical river typically does more damage from a conservation point of view than all of the aquarium trade in all of history combined.

[Janne]

Maybe this is not any new rules/laws, I think Colombia just like Brazil have rules and laws for fishing since many year (at least several years) for protect areas and species under a certain time of year. Several places in Brazil is fishing forbidden for a 4 months period under the reproduction period, maybe there are some new employees in the governments in Colombia? Similar what happen in Brazil beginning 2008 when IBAMA got a new boss that started to enforce the laws that already existed.

They are doing something which must be better then nothing?

Janne

[MatsP]

I agree, it's a good thing.

I just wish they would ALSO work on the areas which are high impact - logging, dam-building, gold-mining with toxic substances, etc.

--
Mats

[Julie]

I've dealt with this same exporter many times over a period of @5 years. Every year they pretty much halt export during the months of May/June because of not being allowed to catch the fish. I'm not at my home computer, so I might have the exact timing wrong, but always fishing is not allowed around that time of year.

So while they have halted fishing before, it wasn't species specific (that I know of!), and it was at a different time of year.

[Jools]

Anything that gets the buying public used to less than limitless supply is a good thing as long as it doesn't materially affect the communities that benefit, riverside, from catching the fish the rest of the time. The way to do it would be to have groups of fish "rested" at different times of the year (assuming, broadly, these are mostly amazonas fish).

Jools

[apistomaster]

Not allowing the harvesting of fish during their breeding season is a sensible regulation which should be accepted and respected.
Most Neotropical fish spawn when water levels are too high for easy collection and if they are easily collected then the chances are they have migrated to traditional spawning streams and become concentrated in small head waters.
Allowing spawning unmolested ensures maintaining high overall numbers. Characins have rapid replacement rates as long as their spawning is left alone so it is the best way to retain a sustainable fisheries.
The harvest for the aquarium trade after spawning is removing only a small fraction of the fish which are mostly lost to natural causes like predation. That harvest has no real effects on the overall population numbers.