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Monica Virginia Biondo Von Oftringen, AG The marine ornamental fish trade in Switzerland and Europe Inauguraldissertation der Philosophisch - naturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Bern vorgelegt von Monica Virginia Biondo von Oftringen, AG | downloaded: 3.2.2020 Leiter der Arbeit: Prof. Dr. W. Nentwig Head of Division Community Ecology Institute of Ecology and Evolution Universität Bern https://doi.org/10.24442/boristheses.1194 source: The marine ornamental fish trade in Switzerland and Europe Inauguraldissertation der Philosophisch - naturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Bern vorgelegt von Monica Virginia Biondo von Oftringen, AG Leiter der Arbeit: Prof. Dr. W. Nentwig Head of Division Community Ecology Institute of Ecology and Evolution Universität Bern Von der Philosophisch - naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät angenommen. Bern, 12. März 2019 Der Dekan: Prof. Dr. Z. Balogh Chromis viridis: The most traded species of marine ornamental fish worldwide Table of contents Page General introduction 5 Chapter 1: Quantifying the trade in marine ornamental fishes into Switzerland and an estimation of imports from the European Union 8 Chapter 2: Importation of marine ornamental fishes to Switzerland 19 Chapter 3: Monit oring the trade in marine ornamental fishes through the European Trade Control and Expert System TRACES: challenges and possibilities 30 General discussion 48 Acknowledgements 52 Declaration of consent 53 Curriculum vit ae 54 4 General introduction Coral reef ecosystems are one of the most biologically rich and diverse environments on the planet. Unfortunately, coral reefs are at risk from several threats such as global warming and ocean acidification (Hughes et al., 2017; Gattuso et al., 2014; Hoegh - Guldberg, 2007), and also from overexploitation, for example, by tr ade (Baillie et al., 2004). The trade in marine ornamental fishes originated in the 1930s with a few coral reef fishes being caught to be kept in aquariums. Today, about 40 million specimens are traded annually and the commerce expands over at least 50 exporting countries from (mainly) South East Asia, with most importing countries situated in the Western Hemisphere. This trade involves more than half the known 4,000 species of coral reef fishes (Rhyne et al., 2017), expands worldwide, and is worth billions of US$ each year ( Leal et al., 2015 ; Dee et al., 2014 ; Monticini, 2010 ; Smith et al., 2008 ; Wabnitz et al., 2003 ). Historically, individual attempts have been conducted to monitor trade, although no global monitoring systems have emerged. This dissertation focuses on the marine ornamental fish trade as well as aspects of its management in Switzerland, Europe and globally, along with impacts on species and the environment. The monitoring of this trade is challenging bec ause so many species and specimens are involved, and the supply chain, from wild - capture to the aquarium holder, is also very extensive (Rhyne et al., 2017; Wabnitz et al., 2003). Almost no relevant fish species breeds in captivity (Sweet, 2017; Penning et al., 2009), and therefore supply originates from wild sources, which are coral reefs. Furthermore, there are concerns amongst scientists regarding the sustainability of this trade, due to the high mortality of specimens in the supply chain (St evens et al., 2017 ; Vagelli, 2011 ; Wabnitz et al., 2003 ). The purpose of this study was to review the existing data on the marine ornamental fish trade to Switzerland and Europe as well as its global implication. The first study examined S witzerland's role in the European and the global marine aquarium trade, and provided basic information on numbers of specimens traded and their diversity by using data from customs documents from 2009. The second and third studies used electronic data from the European Trade Control and Expert System (TRACES) for the years 2014 to 2017 for Switzerland and the European Union (EU). TRACES is in use for disease prevention where animal and plants or their products are imported to Europe. This data produced mean ingful information for imports to Switzerland and the EU, although TRACES is not specifically created to monitor the marine ornamental fish trade. It was possible to yield useful information on the volumes, 5 diversity and trends in number of fish specimens traded. These studies offered tangible ideas on how to adapt the TRACES to adequately collect species data . References Dee L.E., Horii S.S., Thornhill D.J., 2014. Conservation and management of ornamental reef wildlife: Success, shortcomings, and future d irections. Biol Conserv. 169: 225 - 237. doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2013.11.025 Gattuso, J. - P., Hoegh - Guldberg O., Pörtner H. - O., 2014. Cross - chapter box on coral reefs. In: Climate Change 2014: I mpacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Field C.B., Barros V.R, Dokken D.J., Mach K.J., Mastrandrea M.D., Bilir T.E., Chatterjee M., Ebi K.L., Estrada Y.O., Genova R.C., Girma B., Kissel E.S., Levy A.N., MacCracken S., Mastrandrea P.R., White L.L. (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 97 - 100. https://doi.org/ 10.1017/CBO9781107415379.005 Hoegh - Guldberg O., Mumby P.J., Hooten A.J., Steneck R.S., Greenfield P., Gomez E., Harvell C.D., Sale P.F., Edwards A.J., Caldeira K., Knowlton N., Eakin C.M., Iglesias - Prieto R., Muthiga N., Bradbury R.H., Dubi A., Hatziolos M .E., 2007. Coral reefs under rapid climate change and ocean acidification. Science. 318 (5857): 1737 – 1742. doi:10.1126/science.1152509 Hughes T.P., Barnes M.L., Bellwood D.R., Cinner J.E., Cumming G.S., Jackson J.B.C., Joanie Kleypas J., van de Leemput I.A , Lough J.M., Morrison T.H., Palumbi S.R., Egbert H. van Nes E.H., Scheffer M., 2017. Coral reefs in the Anthropocene. Nature 546: 82 - 90. doi:10.1038/nature22901 Leal M.C., Vaz M.C., Puga J., Rocha R.J., Brown C., Rosa R., Calado R., 2015. Marine ornamenta l fish imports in the European Union: an economic perspective. Fish Fish. 17: 459 - 468. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12120 Monticini P., 2010. The Ornamental Fish Trade. Production and commerce of ornamental fish. Technical - managerial and legislative aspects . FAO GLOBEFISH Research Programme; p. 102. Available: http://www.fao.org/3/a - bb206e.pdf (accessed 11.10.2018). 6 Penning M., Reid GMcG, Koldewey H., Dick G., Andrews B., Arai K., Garratt P., Gendron S., Lange S., Tanner K., Tonge S., Van den Sande P., Warmo lts D., Gibson C., 2009. Turning the Tide: a Global Aquarium Strategy for Conservation and Sustainability. World Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Available: http://www.waza.org/files/webcontent/ 1.public_site/5.conservation/conservation_strategies/turning_the_tide/Aquarium%20strategy %20EN.pdf Rhyne A.L., Tlusty M.F., Szczebak J., Holmberg R.J., 2017. Expanding our understanding of the trade in marine aquarium animals. PeerJ. 5:e2949. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2949 Sweet T. 2017: The state of the marine Breeders' art, 2016. CORAL, 13(1). Available: http://www.reef2rainforest.com/2015/12/22/captive - bred - marine - fish - species - list - 2016/ Vagelli A.A., 2011. The banggai cardinalfish. Natural history, conservation and culture of Pterapogon kauderni . Wiley - Blackwell Wabnitz C., Taylor M., Green E., Razak T., 2003. From ocean to aquarium. UNEP - WCM, Cambridge, UK. http://www.unep.org/pdf/from_ocean_to_aquarium_report.pdf 7 Quantifying t he trade in marine ornamental fishes into Switzerland and an estimation of imports from the European Union Published in Global Ecology and Conservation , 11 (2017) 95 - 10 8 Global Ecology and Conservation 11 (2017) 95e105 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Global Ecology and Conservation journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/gecco Original Research Article Quantifying the trade in marine ornamental fishes into Switzerland and an estimation of imports from the European Union Monica V. Biondo Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Baltzerstrasse 6, 3012 Bern, Switzerland article info abstract Article history: Millions of marine ornamental fishes are traded every year. Today, over half of the known Received 15 February 2017 nearly 4000 coral reef fish species are in trade with poor or no monitoring and demand is Accepted 25 May 2017 increasing. This study investigates their trade into and through Switzerland by analyzing Available online 3 June 2017 import documents for live animals. In 2009, 151 import declarations with attached species lists for marine ornamental fishes from non-EU countries totaled 28 356 specimens. The Keywords: 62% of the fishes remaining in Switzerland, comprised 440 marine species from 45 fam- Marine ornamental fishes ilies, the rest transited to EU and non-EU countries. Despite the recognized large trade International trade Trade monitoring volume for the European region, due to bilateral agreements, no data is collected for Trade information system TRACES imports from the EU. However, inferred data shows that more than 200 000 marine IUCN red list ornamental fishes could be imported into Switzerland every year and an unknown CITES convention on international trade of quantity re-exported. As biggest import region, it is therefore safe to assume, that the endangered species European region is importing at least as many marine ornamental fishes as the US. There is no adequate data-collecting system known to be in place in any country for monitoring this trade. The EU Trade Control and Expert System (TRACES) to monitor animal diseases could be adjusted to gather compulsory information for the EU and Switzerland. More than half of the species imported into Switzerland are not assessed by the IUCN and therefore marked as ‘not evaluated’ on the Red List. Overall, 70% of all known coral reef fish species have not been evaluated. If coral reef fishes are threatened or endangered due to large, possibly unsustainable numbers traded, it may be rational to monitor the trade in these species through the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES).
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