Review of "Cebu Mactan Quality Marine Aquarium Fish" in the Philippine Islands

By Stan & Debbie Hauter, About.com Guides

Having worked for a number of years as the manager of a local fish store on the coast of Mississippi, I was able to see on a regular basis, the condition of all the livestock as it arrived. Ten years ago, it was common for me to see at least a twenty five percent mortality rate upon opening the shipping boxes, which came to be accepted as a normal risk when having to ship fish in from the other side of the planet. Although, I did often wonder just exactly what the new arrivals had been through to get to their final destination within my shop. I had many visions of fish being captured with cyanide and dumped into buckets for the bumpy ride back to shore only to be held in horrendous conditions in the tropical heat and having to endure yet even more horrible conditions during their journey through various exporting / importing warehouses. It was no wonder to me that there were such losses upon their arrival at my shop. In fact, after such thoughts, I was surprised that any of the livestock arrived with a heart beat and any further losses were blamed upon what I thought just had to be careless collection and handling methods.

During the summer of 2004, with my children grown and gone, I decided to follow my dream and move to the tropics to be near the reefs that enchant me so very much. Since my wife is from the Philippines, it was the logical, and only choice for me to move here. After my first experience of laying face down over the reefs, it soon became a top priority of mine to set up a reef aquarium again. During my twice weekly trips to the reefs to do my own collecting, I often encountered local fish collectors coming back in from their day of catching fish, which they were more than happy to allow me to inspect their catch in the hopes that they could make a sale right on the beach. Having seen the condition of such fish only reinforced my belief in the sad state of the fish collecting business, also on numerous occasions, I have swam past large net bags packed with fish, anchored to the sea floor in two feet of water which the collector did as a means to hold the fish until he was ready to take them in. After a few hours of sitting in such shallow water which can easily reach ninety degrees Fahrenheit, it came as no surprise to me that I would find half of the fish dead as I returned from my own swimming activities. I later learned that the collectors in my neighborhood worked for a company that did not export the fish themselves but sent them to the capital city of Manilla to be held for export by another company. Which of course I had assumed to be a common practice.

Previous

• Collecting Fish in the Philippine Islands
• The Collectors
• Cebu Mactan Quality Marine Aquarium Fish
• The Holding System
• The Livestock
• Shipping

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