The Puffer Forum

Poor puffers

So long as there 6 billion people on the planet, and they all want to drive cars, and they all want to have two kids, things WILL get worse. Much worse.

I'm doing my share & remain childless.

Ditto. Should I ever get bitten by the child bug I'll try a puppy (adopted). If that doesn't work I'll try a foal If that doesn't work I'll adopt a child, I won't be producing one.

nmonks wrote:On the other hand, LilGreenPuffer, buying wild-caught fish provides an economic justification to preserve a given habitat, whether a coral reef or a rainforest stream. Historically, humans haven't been very good at handling this, and we've tended to exploit a habitat fully until it's destroyed, and then simply moved on. But if we are going to create a sustainable global economy, it's going to have to take into account not everyone is going to be working selling insurance or writing blogs, and for people in the developing world, sustainably harvesting ornamental fish is one very good way to do this. As I've said above, most animals produce far too many offspring per year, and while some will be eaten by predators, others simply starve or fail to find nesting sites, so are effectively worthless. Harvesting these surplus fish is entirely sustainable. Biologists can calculate this number fairly accurately, and it's called the maximum sustainable yield or MSY.

Note to self: Ammended: I will never buy... an endangered species? Is that better? Oh, and avoid the ones that I know are captured in an invasive way?

Pufferpunk wrote:

So long as there 6 billion people on the planet, and they all want to drive cars, and they all want to have two kids, things WILL get worse. Much worse.

I'm doing my share & remain childless.

Me too! Dogs and puffers will suffice for me!

I want to have a couple on my own, but I want to adopt, too. There's too many kids in need of homes not to adopt.

I'm a guy and I cried!

Did you see the bodies of the puffers at the end? What is wrong with humanity! Something needs to be done.

Here are a few quotes from the thread I started on this at RC:

"I'm not sure what all the hub-bub is about this. Boom-bust cycles are not unknown, and can actually be "normal" for some populations of insects. I'm not familiar with similar (natural) cycles in the ocean, but damaged ecosystems often see population swings in certain species. Certainly the inshore habitat is more perturbed than the barrier reef system. The puffers dying is to be expected - it is the "bust" part of the cycle. What is unknown, and needs to be focused on, is why they had a population boom in the first place. For some cycles that I've seen, an introduced species caused the original ecosystem damage (zebra mussels & round gobies in the Great Lakes for example). I wonder if lionfish play a role in this?

All of the Atlantic Canthigaster (6 or so species) are doppelgangers for the common reef toby, C. rostrata. It would be expected that if their ranges over-lap, so would their natural history - diet, predators, etc. Still, of the other species I've heard of, I didn't think any were found in that region - there is one from W. Africa, a couple from the oceanic islands, a deepwater species, one found further south.

Fish in poor condition often succumb to disease. When population growth outstrips the carrying capacity of the environment, the fish will be in poor condition. The huge population increase the Canthigaster saw was just a prelude to the "bust" - no way to avoid it. The puffers themselves dying isn't the issue - it is what caused the "boom" of the cycle that is important."

I wonder, though, about what caused those strange things that were found during the dissections. Wouldn't they have recognized a simple disease as a disease?

Pufferpunk wrote:Here are a few quotes from the thread I started on this at RC:

"I'm not sure what all the hub-bub is about this. Boom-bust cycles are not unknown, and can actually be "normal" for some populations of insects. I'm not familiar with similar (natural) cycles in the ocean, but damaged ecosystems often see population swings in certain species. Certainly the inshore habitat is more perturbed than the barrier reef system. The puffers dying is to be expected - it is the "bust" part of the cycle. What is unknown, and needs to be focused on, is why they had a population boom in the first place. For some cycles that I've seen, an introduced species caused the original ecosystem damage (zebra mussels & round gobies in the Great Lakes for example). I wonder if lionfish play a role in this?

There is some credence to this thought. Almost all species of Grouse have noticeable and well studied population cycles centered around a 10 year span. Five years on the up swing and five on the down, hunters follow this closely. I wonder is the same is true in the puffer world, I have heard of it in fur bearing animals too.

Although I don't see how those lionfish being introduced into the Caribbean have anything to do with it.

Dadof4 wrote:Almost all species of Grouse have noticeable and well studied population cycles centered around a 10 year span. Five years on the up swing and five on the down, hunters follow this closely. I wonder is the same is true in the puffer world, I have heard of it in fur bearing animals too.

Arcadia!

Pufferpunk wrote:Although I don't see how those lionfish being introduced into the Caribbean have anything to do with it.

I don't see it either. Normal cyclic population swings and environmental conditions factor in the biggest to the die offs being seen.