Nano Gobies

getting a species out of the endangered zone
For a fish that was supposed to be the marine equivalent
of the guppy, the Banggai Cardinalfish has proved
itself to be an enigma. We were fortunate
enough to obtain one of the first pairs of Pterapogon
kauderni imported following the species’ introduction
to the aquarium world by Dr. Gerry Allen at MACNA
VII in Louisville in 1995. Placed in a small desktop
aquarium for observation, they spawned within a month
and the male went on a food fast, brooding a mouthful
of eggs. There were but 17 fry—tiny, perfect replicas of
their parents on the day they emerged—but they did not
hesitate to attack and eat frozen Artemia nauplii.
We assumed that home breeders would embrace the
species, then selling for princely sums, and that every local
fish store would soon have local suppliers of captivebred
Banggai Cardinalfishes.
Seventeen years later, nothing of the sort has come to
pass, and in 2007 Pterapogon kauderni was placed on the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
Red List of endangered species. With the 2011 publication
of The Banggai Cardinalfish: Natural History, Conservation,
and Culture of Pterapogon kauderni (Wiley,
2011), Dr. Alejandro Vagelli squarely blamed the marine
aquarium trade, amateur aquarists, and the “aquarium
media” for dramatically reducing wild populations of the
fish, even completely wiping it out in some locations.
After reading his damning words and the dismaying
Red List reports, we made a personal resolution to respond.
Dr. Vagelli’s work has been questioned by some,
but we learned from wildlife conservation sources working
in the Banggai Islands that there are, indeed, problems
in the aquarium fishery there that need addressing.
Dr. Allen himself did some the field work that led to the
species’ endangered listing, and he believes that corrective
actions are warranted.
It turns out that others were ready to act as well. The
Rising Tide Conservation Initiative, led by Dr. Judy St.
Leger and in concert with the Association of Zoos and
Aquariums, is targeting P. kauderni as one of five popular
aquarium species that need to be aquacultured commercially
to take the pressure off wild populations.
A group of marine biologists and fisheries scientists
at the University of Florida’s Tropical Aquaculture Lab
(TAL) at Ruskin have already started to turn the Rising
Tide goals into realities. Under the direction of aquaculturist
Craig Watson, M.Aq., who is the director of the
lab, Matthew Wittenrich, Ph.D., had been looking into
the challenges of Banggai Cardinalfish culture.
His colleague, fish veterinarian Dr. Roy Yanong, had
been researching the puzzling mass deaths of so many
wild-caught Banggais being brought into the U.S. His lab
found an iridovirus in samples of dead fish from a group
of 1,000 broodstock specimens bought by a U.S. commercial
aquaculture operation. All 1,000 had died of the
disease.
When looking for assistance in funding a TAL research
expedition to the Banggai Islands, Drs. Wittenrich
and Yanong contacted this magazine. We immediately
said yes, not quite sure where this small company,
still in its launch phase and experiencing everyday growing
pains, would find the money. We decided to embed
journalist and CORAL senior editor Ret Talbot in the
expedition and to invite Matt Pedersen, senior editor
and an accomplished home-scale breeder, to work on a
new guide for a species that had proved uncooperative
for many would-be hobbyist breeders. Plans were quickly
made to produce a series of magazine articles and a definitive
book. But how to fund all of this?
Enter Kickstarter, a radical new “crowd-funding”
tool for creative projects in need of unconventional support.
Thanks largely to the generous and enthusiastic
support of CORAL readers, advertisers, and supporters,
we have just succeeded in exceeding our funding goals
after a month of seeking backers for the project.
All of us involved in this believe there is no single solution
to the problems that have beset the Banggai Cardinalfish.
Our goals are to help foster a healthier, more
sustainable fishery for wild specimens, to find protocols
for commercial-scale mariculture and aquaculture, to
establish better methods for hobbyists wishing to breed
this species to meet local demands, and to publish the
whole story and all of the lessons learned in CORAL and
in the Banggai project book. In this, we value the interest,
suggestions, criticisms, and involvement of the entire
CORAL community.
James Lawrence
www.banggai-rescue.com
CORAL
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