- The trade in marine fish for home aquariums is a major cause of coral reef fish decline, and in the years since Finding Nemo was released, clownfish populations on coral reefs have been declining sharply as more and more people want a “Nemo” of their own.
- More than one million clownfish are taken from reefs every year and sold to private individuals for their home aquariums.
- Researchers from the University of Queensland and Flinders University have created The Saving Nemo Conservation Fund to protect popular marine species that are often captured on reefs and sold in pet shops through education initiatives and captive breeding programs.
You’re probably familiar with the 2003 animated film Finding Nemo — it was a box office hit that grossed nearly $400 million, after all. But you may be less familiar with the film’s ecological impact.
The trade in marine fish for home aquariums is a major cause of coral reef fish decline, and in the years since Finding Nemo was released, clownfish populations on coral reefs have been declining sharply as more and more people want a “Nemo” of their own.
“What most people don’t realise is that about 90 percent of marine fish found in aquarium shops come from the wild,” Carmen Da Silva, a PhD candidate at Australia’s University of Queensland, said in a statement. “Reef fish populations are already struggling due to warmer sea temperatures and ocean acidification caused by global warming. The last thing they need is to be plucked off reefs.”
More than one million clownfish are taken from reefs every year and sold to private individuals for their home aquariums. The fish are going extinct altogether in some areas due to over-collection and coral bleaching caused, at least in part, by rising ocean temperatures.
Last month, scientists announced that 99 percent of coral reefs surveyed in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef have been hit by a current global bleaching event that had already impacted reefs at the Pacific islands of Hawaii, Vanuatu, American Samoa, and Fiji, as well as parts of the Caribbean, the Florida Keys, and the Indian Ocean.
That’s why Da Silva and colleagues from the University of Queensland have teamed up with researchers from Flinders University to create The Saving Nemo Conservation Fund, which aims to protect popular marine species that are often captured on reefs and sold in pet shops through education initiatives and captive breeding programs.
The team hopes to enlist the support of Ellen DeGeneres, who voices the character Dory in Finding Nemo as well as the forthcoming sequel, Finding Dory, via the hashtag #fishkiss4nemo and their campaign to raise “a million fish kisses” on social media.
The fear is that the release of the sequel this June could cause a resurgence of ornamental species being taken from reefs — especially Dory’s species, the blue tang — just as Finding Nemo caused populations of clownfish in the wild to drop.
Efforts to save these individual species could have broader benefits, as research shows that greater biodiversity can help reef fish weather the impacts of global warming.
“People fell in love with the adorable characters and wanted to keep them as pets, instead of understanding the film’s conservation message of keeping Nemo in the ocean where he belongs,” Anita Nedosyko of Flinders University, a Saving Nemo co-founder, said in a statement.
The Saving Nemo team has been running a clownfish breeding program for the past five years and selling the sustainably raised fish to local aquariums.
“Clownfish are extremely easy to breed and females lay many eggs at a time so there is really no reason to collect them from the wild,” Da Silva added. “Nursery-bred fish are also far happier and healthier in tanks than wild-caught fish.”