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    Florida Fish and Wildlife was Invited to MACNA, Rightfully So?

    While some vendors were not so professional, others welcomed the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s (FWC) place at MACNA 2010. In case you have yet to hear, a Lieutenant Brown was in attendance at this past MACNA representing the FWC.  Lt. Brown was speaking with vendors about their livestock, specifically where it originated from. While [...]

    macna fwc usfw

    While some vendors were not so professional, others welcomed the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s (FWC) place at MACNA 2010. In case you have yet to hear, a Lieutenant Brown was in attendance at this past MACNA representing the FWC.  Lt. Brown was speaking with vendors about their livestock, specifically where it originated from.

    usfw fwc macna

    While it caught many by surprise, hopefully in the future vendors will be better prepared for such legitimate questions. To the pleasure of some and the angst of others, our hobby is heading towards increased regulation. The more respectful we can be to these groups and authorities, the more willing they will be to hear about the positives of aquaria, such as aquaculture. Shown here, Kevin Kohen of LiveAquaria explains to Lieutenant Brown that the majority of the animals (if not all) on display in LA’s tiered zero edge, are aquacultured; including the captive raised Banggai Cardinals.

    Some folks were upset by the armed FWC Lieutenant, others were pleased. ORCA treasurer and MACNA 2010 VP, Jon Clements personally invited FWC to attend the event. Jon shared more on this in the MACNA RC Forum:

    1. FWC was at MACNA 2010 at my invitation.
    2. No vendor at the event was fined. Although one acted very inappropriately and came close to getting arrested.
    3. Lieutenant Brown acted with the upmost professionalism.

    …

    FWC was given a booth at the event and Martha and Rick both had exhibitor badges waiting for them at registration. The internal communication within FWC could have been better as it was not shared with Lieutenant Brown that we had indeed inquired about what we should have had for the event. When Officer Brown was informed of this he responded appropriately by issuing warnings and not fines.

    …

    What impressed me was that Lieutenant Brown had books and materials with him to help with the identification of the species that are found in Florida waters and thus are protected. He also had a willingness to both learn and admit when a mistake has been made. After being at the event on Saturday he went home to study the laws more carefully and found that Corals do not fall into the category of products defined as “Saltwater products” and thus do not require a licensee (strange as that may be). But it is necessary for people selling coral to be able to document that the corals were obtained from outside of the State of Florida.

    Now for what may be the best part of the story. Because of FWC being at MACNA there is are discussions underway between the leaders of many Clubs in Florida, the FWC, and the Florida Department of Agriculture (they regulated Aquaculture). The goal being to eliminate the grey area that many clubs and club events have existing in for many years. If this comes to be I will be very proud that MACNA 2010 played a part.

    Would it have been nice if the communication and legal details were ironed out first? Absolutely. That said, its time our hobby and industry begins interacting with these officials and authorities in a professional manner. If we don’t there are plenty of Snorkel Bob’s out there that will.

    Related Posts

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    4. MACNA Places Emphasis on ‘Trade’ Show with Wholesale Only Day
    5. MACNA XXI : LiveAquaria’s Display, a Rare Fish Dream

    Meta

    • Mipinchehermano

      to Mr.Jon Clements,duuuude
      why didn’t you give people a heads up-forewarn folks that the FWC were coming?
      thats why some got pissed!!!.allow people to prepare
      You dropped the ball, saying your intent was honorable is just lame excuse for putting so many of us on the spot

    • jmaneyapanda

      @ Mipinchehermano- What? Prepare for what? Permitting regulations and laws need to be followed all the time, not just when an officer is announced to be present. I, for one, WELCOME the wildlife control officers participation. Vendors were upset at what, exactly? The fact that they were being asked about their responsibility to follow the law? That should be done regardless of officer involvement.

      Please tell me, how exactly were you “put on the spot”?

    • Per

      yeah, this seems more like a “shell shock” tactic rather than a heads up approach.
      my 2 euro cents.

    • jmaneyapanda

      Again, without making vague “accusations”, what preparation was needed from vendors? I find it more suspicious that vendors felt they needed to be informed that they would be held accountable to wildlife law. I EXPECT that from vendors.

    • Nicksadaka

      jmaneyapada is absolutey, positively right. If we want to be considered an environmentally responsible hobby then we have to follow ALL the rules ALL the time. We have to be looked at industry wide as one with “clean hands”. He’s also right that something is wrong if vendors feel like they needed to be “tipped off”…we’re an aquarium hobby, not a drug smuggling ring.

    • Mwandell

      Absolutely agree with Jeremy as well.

    • http://blueworldaquariums.com Spencer

      I think this should have been (and hopefully was for most) an opportunity for vendors to express the positive direction our industry is taking to these authorities. Industry professionals who sincerely care about the reefs and the animals we keep should not be surprised or threatened by their presence, IMO. We should share their concerns for conservation and protection of species.

    • Cdcava

      I think both sides have a point.

      It shouldn’t automatically be that vendors should be labeled suspicious people when they get angry at the unannounced visit.. it may be that documentation isn’t perfect ALL the time. Many examples point to this situation in life outside aquaria all the time… I mean do you know if everything you do is legal under the eyes of the law? Of course not, but we learn from it.. usually through a fair warning.. which, from what I understand, is the extent of what the officer did… a very reasonable action.

      I understand that vendors should know what corals came from where, but unless you are part of the industry, it’s difficult to understand the confusion and sometimes the complexity of buying and identifying corals to later sell. We’ve all been in a fish store where we saw a coral mislabeled innocently, and sometimes not. But the short of it, it happens.

      From what I see the reaction of the vendors comes more from frustration at the possibility of being caught doing something unintentionally illegal while still being morally innocent. Without question just about all (Moral) reefers support the fair policing of the coral trade… we all want to protect endangered/protected corals, but this should be something we should all work together on. The vendors probably felt a massive dose of mistrust when they were surprised by the presence of an officer, as opposed to being included.

      What’s done is done, and I hope that (moral) vendors don’t walk away from this with the attitude of being frightened/scared of the authorities. It would delay and stifle the very work that the authorities, clubs, organizations, and hobbyists want accomplished.

      Could the situation have been handled better? Sure. But luckily, under the eyes of most vendors, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. What if the officer was completely set on fining all of the MACNA coral vendors? I don’t even want to think how far that would have backtracked the good work from good people. We got lucky with having a fair man as an officer, but now lets not depend on luck to make a situation a positive one… instead lets continue the good headway we’re making into the future of this hobby.

    • http://blog.captive-aquatics.com Mike Maddox

      I think the ethics in the hobby have definitely been sliding downwards, and it’s awesome to see official presence stepping up for enforcement.

    • Wayne

      ¨To an earlier post, this is not a situation I tihnk where it is ok to be a bit woolly on i.d., and paperwork. For the system to function, species id does have to be as close to perfect as possible to allow CITES quotas to function, and to stop the sale of illegal species.
      Vendors are a part of the industry, and the onus is on them to get it right Mistakes may be unintentional, but they are still mistakes, illegal and damaging to the industry. Enough innocent mistakes will get us all shut down, and I don’t happen to think that casual carelessness is morally innocent either.

    • Nicksadaka

      Very well said, Wayne. I agree completely. Regardless of whether you are a retailer/vendor or a customer, if we don’t tighten up what we are doing as an industry we’re going to be shut down completely. Hell, we might get shut down even if we do everything right, but for sure if we’re not than the writing is on the wall for our hobby. It might seem harsh and unforgiving, but if we all want our beloved hobby to be around in 5 years, we as customers need to demand this from our chosen vendors and we need to embrace the vendors that embrace doing things the “right way” no matter what.

    • http://glassbox-design.com/ GBD

      We received this in an e-mail via our tips box. Why someone would send this anonymously is an important question, but some may find value in the words below.

      “The said truth of this matter is that FWC officers know little about marine life issues, are not specifically trained on the topic, are overworked, underpaid, have no real working manual (not yet anyway, they’ve been working on one for 5 years or so), there is a lot of turn over, they do not have any real enforcement abilities (tickets, big deal), when they do catch someone it is just a slap on the wrist (cost of doing business), they can’t take away the bad guy’s licenses (guy went to federal prison and sold his license for 18K, state could do nothing about it), should I go on?

      That is the sad truth of the situation in FL. Its a wild wild west show. With honest to goodness hard working fisherman, some bad apples, some not so bad apples that do bad things because there is no enforcement and they see others doing bad things, some really bad folks and then plenty in between. It’s a complete mess and it will likely never get fixed.

      Those are the very sad facts. The ones that pay the price are the honest hard working fisherman that are only getting paid pennies for things that should be dollars because everyone is cheating the system. Fisherman would police themselves and their waters, but they need some trained help and right now that doesn’t exists. When they make a call its hours or days or never before someone responds. They stop calling after a while.”

    • Nicksadaka

      This seems to be the problem throughout the world. We can make all the laws we want to protect reefs and the oceans, but if there’s no enforcement, what good is it? Personally, I’ve only heard about one area that’s good with enforcement and that’s around the Australian area. In my opinion, this is where we need international cooperation to come together and enforce these international laws and create more. We won’t really do anything groundbreaking environmentally until the world decides to come together as a whole and work coorperatively to help protect the world environment rather than individual areas handling their local areas to wildly varying degrees of success.

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