This summer, marine biologists at the University of Florida shared groundbreaking news: for the first time blue tang fish, AKA the star of Finding Dory, were successfully bred in captivity.
This is hugely significant. Every blue tang in an aquarium right now was taken from the wild, most illegally.
The breakthrough follows six years of research, funded by Rising Tide Conservation. The first positive signs appeared in late May, when one of the breeding team, Kevin Barden, was working with 50,000 eggs.
“We were entering unknown territory,” marvelled the Dory daddy. “It was a complete roller-coaster ride.”
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That number reduced drastically as eggs died off, but on June 20, 2016, he discovered hundreds of blue tang larvae. On July 4, a group settled in the bottom of the tank, and one week later, 27 were identifiably growing into "baby Dorys." Judy St. Leger, president of Rising Tide Conservation, described it as a “new chapter,” offering for the first time a choice over where the fish come from.
Living mainly on coral reefs or rocky inshore waters, blue tang are found from east Africa to Japan, Australia to New York. It is estimated that a quarter of a million are sold globally each year, not counting those that die in transit.
Many are illegally harvested by divers squirting cyanide on the reef, stunning the fish, which are then scooped up. Effects of the poison include suffocation and central nervous system damage, while reefs suffer vast, long-lasting or terminal damage. The ability to breed them in captivity could drastically reduce damage to fish and reefs.
Courtesy of INSP.ngo / The Big Issue UK
