Expanding our understanding of the trade in marine aquarium animals

作者：Andrew L. Rhyne, Michael F. Tlusty, Joseph T. Szczebak, Robert J. Holmberg · 发表于：PeerJ · 年份：2017 · DOI：10.7717/peerj.2949 · 被引用次数：142 · 研究领域：Identification and Quantification in Food、Coral and Marine Ecosystems Studies、Marine and fisheries research

The trade of live marine animals for home and public aquaria has grown into a major global industry. Millions of marine fishes and invertebrates are removed from coral reefs and associated habitats each year. The majority are imported into the United States, with the remainder sent to Europe, Japan, and a handful of other countries. Despite the recent growth and diversification of the aquarium trade, to date, data collection is not mandatory, and hence comprehensive information on species volume and diversity is lacking. This lack of information makes it impossible to study trade pathways. Without species-specific volume and diversity data, it is unclear how importing and exporting governments can oversee this industry effectively or how sustainability should be encouraged. To expand our knowledge and understanding of the trade, and to effectively communicate this new understanding, we introduce the publically-available Marine Aquarium Biodiversity and Trade Flow online database ( https://www.aquariumtradedata.org/ ). This tool was created to communicate the volume and diversity of marine fishes and/or invertebrates imported into the US over three complete years (2008, 2009, and 2011) and three partial years (2000, 2004, 2005). To create this tool, invoices pertaining to shipments of live marine fishes and invertebrates were scanned and analyzed for species name, species quantities, country of origin, port of entry, and city of import destination. Here we focus on the analysi...