OP: I do admire you for giving up the hobby due to the reasons you provided. Doing something you do not want to do but are doing because it's what you believe is right is a very admirable thing.
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Originally posted by rcypert
Are you a vegetarian? Cause eating meat is 100 times more damaging to the reefs and environment then collecting a 3 inch fish once a month. The by catch of the commercial fishing industry dwarfs any damage that this industry could cause. All of us have much to be guilty about but I hope you don't think your a better person for not having a fish tank. Try going without meat for a few days. Try bicycling to work. Then think about the damage that we do and try to see how this hobby stacks up to some other things. If you want to make the world a better place for animals think about factory farming and the harvesting of fish for human consumption.
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Good points! Factory farming and overfishing are environmentally detrimental practices, and going vegetarian or vegan is a huge thing one can do in order to downgrade their individual carbon/pollution footprint. Here are a few comments on how many resources are consumed by livestock:
"Farmed animals consume 70 percent of the corn, wheat, and other grains that we grow, and one-third of all the raw materials and fossil fuels used in the U.S. go to raising animals for food. "
"To date, probably the most reliable and widely-accepted water estimate to produce a pound of beef is the figure of
2,500 gallons/pound . Newsweek once put it another way: "the water that goes into a 1,000 pound steer would float a destroyer." "
"In her 1971 classic Diet for a Small Planet, she calculated that it took 21 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef, and that an acre of land devoted to cereals could produce five times as much protein as an acre devoted to meat production. Since then, beef producers have improved their efficiency, but when we take into account the fact that only about half the weight of a steer is boneless beef, 13 pounds of grain are required to produce that single pound of beef. With pigs, it takes about six pounds of grain to produce one pound of boneless pork. But even these figures are flattering to meat production, because a pound of meat contains much more water than a pound of grain does."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programme...ht/5313424.stm
I don't feel too much guilt about the water my 75 gallon consumes (as from the above it looks like eating less than half an ounce of beef uses about 75 gallons- and I'm vegan) I'm otherwise very environmentally conscious, especially where water is concerned. My main concerns are the ethics of taking wild creatures into captivity, although I have very few fish, and have done my best to only get tank-bred specimens. I am getting a lighting upgrade because I wish to start a reef, and I am adamant that my reef will be seeded by aquacultured frags.
Though that being said, the impact on wild reefs made my our hobby is next to NOTHING compared to oceanic pollution, speed boats, seaside development, hyper-tourism, etc.
I do believe that it's very hard for humans to care about what they do not know. To save something you have to love it; to love something you have to know it. This hobby has given me an appreciation of the delicacy and wonder of wild reefs I don't think I would have had without it, and it's my mission to show everyone I know my aquarium, let them play with my cleaner shrimp, and have my yellow goby sit on their hands. I know if nothing else I've put a few people off of ever eating shrimp again! And hopefully they will also know a bit more about the ocean, and love it a little more.
It's a tall order I know! But I believe it's a very powerful justification.