Keeping exotic fish is massive in the UK.
In fact, fish out number all other pets we keep,
With over 100 million fish being kept in tanks across the country.
There's a huge variety of fish on offer.
Varying shapes, sizes, colours, habitats.
and along with the abundance of choice, is the immediacy of buying them,
at pet shops across our high streets and online.
Where are they coming from?
Most of these fish are actually coming from the Coral Triangle, where diversity is greatest.
And what impact does this have on our oceans?
Many species, will disappear in the future.
I'm on my way to Bristol Aquarium to meet an Aquarist.
Who's going to tell me a little bit more about the kinds of fish that they have there,
but also the types of fish people like to keep as pets.
Hey, how are you doing?
Good. How are you?
Good, thanks.
Aquarist Josh, offers to take me on a tour of their tanks.
What kind of fish do you have in Bristol Aquarium?
So in the aquarium we've got lots of different fish from the British habitat.
So our native fish,
along with some animals from exotic regions around the world,
all of these animals are mostly from the coral reefs of Australia
so the Great Barrier Reef is where they would naturally call home.
Yeah, I can recognize a few of them.
Stingrays, that's a Regal Blue Tang.
There's a massive fish down there that was going around.
We do have a very good big Grouper.
She's actually hiding just down in this,
oh God yeah, she's scary.
These guys are familiar.
Yeah. There's some faces in here you may recognize from a few films.
There's lots of different species of clownfish.
Yeah,
It's not just the orange ones.
About 30 different species.
Is this one of the most popular places in the aquarium?
Definitely, yeah. The Clownfish are hugely popular because they're really recognisable,
And so are the Regal Tangs now, mainly because of the films Finding Nemo and Finding Dory.
I guess those films probably made such an impact on what people like, what people want?
Definitely. If they see an animal that they've seen in a film and then they see them here,
It can always encourage people to keep fish at home.
This isn't the kind of view you get in your home fish tank, is it?
No, it's a little bit bigger.
Do you think people's interest in keeping fish in the UK is growing?
I would say so. I think it gets more and more popular every single year with things getting a lot more accessible.
Also, some of the animals have also got cheaper as time goes along.
Is there like a growing trade on the Internet?
Are more online shops popping up do you think?
With better websites, but also better shipping as well.
People are getting more trust in online shopping when it comes to livestock.
Do you think not everybody who gets them will know exactly where they came from?
I think it's a concern for some species that can only be wild caught,
Especially when there's certain species that are only found in a very small area.
So this can make a massive impact for their wild populations.
Well, honestly, thanks Josh so much.
Been really interesting getting to meet all these guys.
It's estimated that 25 million ornamental fish are imported into the UK every year.
90% of these are freshwater, which means their natural habitats are streams, rivers and lakes.
Their ability to adapt to changes of water levels, temperature and oxygenation makes them easier to care for.
And so 95% of them are bred in captivity before being sold.
The other 10% of fish we import are marine fish whose habitats are in the sea.
They're much more sensitive to change and are only able to live in waters with high salt levels.
And so 90% of marine fish we buy are caught in the wild.
There are more than 380 marine fish species for us to buy in the UK and they come from tropical
oceans all around the world.
I'm about to speak with trade expert Jo from CEFAS, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture
Science. I want to find out how these marine fish are caught and how the trade is monitored.
Hi, Jo
Hi, Dan. Nice to meet you.
I first kind of wanted to ask you, where do a lot of these fish actually come from?
We look at the Marine specifically.
They're coming from all over, all over the world.
They're collected from coral reef ecosystems, and that can be from the Caribbean,
Florida, Hawaii, Australia.
But most of these fish are actually coming from the Coral Triangle, where diversity is greatest.
What's happening to those fish and how are they being caught in the wild?
Most of the fish that are caught are caught by hand, by free
divers. They will take small boats, take a deep breath.
And go down and dive and collect them using these small hand nets or scoop nets,
depending on the species and size and morphology.
It's really crucial that we we make the point about how important this can be for local communities,
And they're reliant on this.
Some of the fishermen that I met in the Philippines, this is their sole source of income.
So what would a unsustainable way of catching these fish be?
Some people might instantly think about the use of cyanide.
The diver would squirt the chemical in the vicinity of the fish and it would essentially stun
the fish, So that it's easier to then scoop it within with a net.
It's use is only in a few instances,
but it is an issue that people have been looking at developing ways to test for the use of cyanide
still.
How is the process of catching fish monitored?
In source countries, so where they're collecting the fish and there'll be different national and
local legislation and regulations,
to ensure that those fish are being collected in the right ways,
so when it arrives then into the importing country so far into the
UK, paperwork on the consignments will then be checked, but it's not in a
digitally available format,
which is easy to interrogate accessibility to that full dataset,
would allow us to focus our attention on species,
which we think might be more vulnerable to collection.
Could it not be the case that maybe one of those species is becoming endangered and it's just not being tracked
properly?
There are quite very few, actually, that have been assessed in terms of their
IUCN status.
So if they're endangered or threatened,
so there is some assessment to be done there on marine ornamental fish being traded.
If that many fish are being traded,
and we don't actually have the exact you know scientific evidence to prove completely
that it's totally sustainable,
we don't know that it is. And that sounds like it's something that you really hope that we get that information soon.
There's a lot of unanswered questions, a lot of missing data.
And I'd love to learn a little bit more about the solutions to what these
problems could be.
Panama is a key player in the fishing industry with over a thousand kilometres of coral reef coastline.
In recent years, it's also become a leading country for providing a sustainable alternative to catching wild
fish. I'm about to meet Till, a marine biologist and founder of Bocas
Muriculture, a marine aquaculture farm.
He cultures marine species native to the area, while employing local fishermen, providing them with jobs and income.
Hi, Till. How's it going?
Hi, Dan. I'm doing well.
How are you?
I'm good, thanks.
So what is aquaculture and how are you using it?
Marine fish are way more difficult to breed in captivity than freshwater fish.
Right?
What's going to happen if we keep taking fish from the wild?
What you guys are doing there to breed animals that will go into people's homes, into other aquariums.
That exact same technique could one day be used to get them back into reefs, back into the ocean, b
ack into the wild.
Why is it important to make the exotic fish trade sustainable?
Keeping fish can be an amazing experience.
It's also a really important economy for many people who are dependent on this trade for their livelihoods.
But we have to acknowledge that taking fish from the wild can cause enormous damage to our oceans.
And with limited monitoring of the trade, it's a real possibility that we could lose our fish for good.
Fortunately, there are people like Till who are working towards a sustainable fish trade.
So exotic fish can be enjoyed by us all around the world.