GreshamH said:
cwolfus said:
Great meeting!
One thing Rich didn't mention is that in addition to the fish that die at the LFS or our tanks MANY MANY more die at each stage in the chain of custody. Its been a very long time since I visited a wholesaler/transhipper (10+ years) but it seemed like 20% of the fish they received were DOA. Then more died in their tanks. Then they were packed and shipped to LFSs (where more died). Does anyone know what those numbers are like these days? How many fish die for every one that we buy?
Damn do you work for the government? They are the only ones that spout such bogus numbers :lol:
Transhippers do not tank fish so they by definition have 0% DOA/DAA. A wholesaler would go out of business with a 20% constant DOA, sorry but that is just totally bogus info your passing along and at the expense of what truly happens. When I was in wholesale we never got above a 3% DOA/DAA
COMBINED. The rare time we did was due to poor handling along the CoC by entities we int he trade have no control over, the airlines and the governing agencies.
How many die depends on the fish and how they are $$ percieved. Damsels are the tightest pack so they tend to far worse then let's say Angels that area a higher dollar fish thus resulting in a better packing job. They also are larger fish so their % of the freight is much higher.
I don't work for the gov't... yet!
I see your point Gresham, and I stand corrected. It is irresponsible of me to be making general statements of my vague observations from a decade ago without reproducible facts; especially in a situation as charged as this one. Clearly there are many good people, with skills, that do a great job, use best practices, and have the animal's interest in their practices. Those people's livelihood, and this hobby, are at risk from extremists who may succeed at shutting down this hobby and I have no business providing fodder by making baseless accusations.
Even in the late 90's, when I visited Quality Marine and another wholesaler who's name I cannot remember, I could instantly see they knew what they were doing; and had few losses as a result. The same holds true with the Boberts not so long ago, and I have no doubt that you only worked in high quality operations like these.
I also visited a specific transhipper with a small operation near LAX and personally saw fish going into tanks. Why was I visiting? Because they regularly sold animals that came in but could not be forwarded to the intended end point. This particular operation was nothing like a Quality Marine or Asap, but they did have fish and other animals in their tanks for sale to those with a resale license. There was a lot of death there, but I cannot say for certain how much. I should not have made that statement and retract it as baseless.
However, that "transhipper" did have losses and was tanking animals. Maybe that made them not a transhipper, by definition, but that was what they claimed to be.
I'm just glad to know what I saw was the exception. BAR needs to hear more reputable viewpoints. Knowledge is power and we all need a lot more!
He had a good message and that was for us to not take everything he says as gospel, and that we should research info yourself.
).