I agree that removing an anemone has a negative affect on the clownfish population. But what I don't understand is what makes that any different from taking a lot of other 'acceptable' wild animals from the ocean. Many corals live for a very long time and provide homes for a lot of animals in much the same way anemones do. Corals are the building block of coral reefs, yet we take them and they do die, often. In fact anemonies grow faster and reproduce mush faster than the SPS corals. Cleaner shrimp and cleaner wrasses provide very important services and yet they are collected. When you take a fish from the ocean you are taking an animal that could have reproduced or supplied food for another animal, so in a sense you are breaking down the food chain in that ecosystem. So if you own anything from the ocean how can anyone justify thier attack on those who keep anemonies? I don't think one can. Like I said before, I don't think it is wrong to take animals from the ocean in a responsible fashin. Reponsible meaning that the populations are not damaged and have cause minimal damage to the reef. I think taking anemonies from the reef can be done with minimal damage. When I dove in the red sea I saw an awful lot of bubble and long tenticle anemonies without a single clownfish. If a few of those were taken, it would have had a minamal inpact.
Also, anemone, were do you get your statisic that 90%+ anemonies die. If is from this internet survey
http://trickstr.tripod.com/survey_r.htm this survey is not a true representation of the truth and shouldn't be stated as fact which people oten are doing. While it is a noble effort, statistically it is full of bias and problems that make it a very poor survey and not something to be quoted as fact. If you asked a statistics professor I'm positive they would agree.