When the movie Finding Nemo came out in 2003 it became an instant hit. Children from all over the world loved the little fish with a tiny fin that could do just about anything. If you remember, the story centered around a little Clown fish that was ripped from him home the coral reef only to be sold to a dentist for his aquarium. The message must have gotten lost somewhere because all the kids that loved the movie ended up doing exactly the same thing as the bad guy from the movie. They all wanted their very own Nemo and so they went out and bought them from the store. The sale of clown fish rose exponentially and 90% of those fish were taken from the wild.
A marine biology expert said, “There’s nothing wrong with owning a marine fish in an aquarium but I think a lot of people didn’t realise 90 percent of clown fish sold are taken from the wild.”
The demand for the cute little fish has now driven the species to the brink of extinction. An associate dean of Flinders University Faculty of Science has already warned, “We’re seeing local extinction in areas where they’re collected.” More horrifying is how they’re being collected. “In places like Thailand and Indonesia and the Philippines they are collected using cyanide poisoning. A bit of cyanide in low concentrations is squirted on the coral area you want to collect fish from and it acts as a bit of an anesthetic.”
Clown fish were already in jepordy to begin with because their natural habitat, coral reefs, have been dying off or destroyed at an alarming rate due to bleaching or rising sea temperatures. There is now a campaign that is aimed to save the species. Experts say that clown fish are actually quite easy to raise in captivity so a foundation in Australia aims to do just that. They want to raise tons of little Nemos in captivity for the express purpose to become a child’s new best friend thus leaving the wild ones to repopulate.
But, now that the sequel, Finding Dory, is set to release soon the question is, will the same thing happen to other fish? Dory, the forgetful blue fish is based on the Blue Tang fish. These fish are quite beautiful in real life and are prized in many aquariums. Many people might say that they can do what they’re doing for the clown fish and raise a bunch in captivity. The problem is that Blue Tang fish are extremely difficult to raise in captivity. Many conservationists fear that the world population of Blue Tangs will drop drastically when the movie is released just as with the clown fish. There is no current solution being implemented but only time will tell if children take to Dory as well as they did to Nemo.
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