“We’ve got to shrink the flavors of fishes available to hobbyists.”

This is not what I expected to hear from ornamental fish trade veteran Tim Haywood when we connected to discuss the aquarium industry. It’s rare to come across businessfolk calling for a constriction of their market.

Then again, Haywood is no ordinary industry insider. He’s a man determined to confront what he calls the aquarium trade’s “gray areas” so the hobby he loves can become fit for the 21st century.

Haywood comes across as someone who’s aware that the honesty required to fix his beloved hobby also risks causing damage by opening it up to criticism. So he speaks frankly but carefully when he tells me about these gray areas: the often hidden tolls of the trade, such as the negative effects of intensive captive breeding on fishes’ welfare, and the deaths of millions of fish and other aquarium organisms each year so people can enjoy watching the colorful survivors in their home tanks around the world.

These are problems few people see or understand, despite the aquarium trade’s massive scope and ubiquity around the world — and particularly in the United Kingdom.

An Ancient Hobby

Fishkeeping has been practiced for millennia, reportedly beginning with ornamental carp being displayed in China and other Asian countries. The practice made its way to Britain by the 17th century.  One of the first documented accounts came from Samuel Pepys, the creator of the first English Dictionary, whose 1665 diaries reflect on his observing a “fine rarity: of fishes kept in a glass of water, that will live so for ever” — namely exotic fishes — while visiting a friend.

Fishkeeping in the United Kingdom has grown a lot since then. According to the Ornamental Aquatic Trade Association, the country’s aquarium market is worth £1 billion (about $1.3 billion) a year, with more than 100 million fishes — representing hundreds if not thousands of species — in tanks and ponds across the nation.

The UK plays an outsized role in the global aquarium trade, considering its small size. Trade figures collated by the World Bank’s World Integrated Trade Solution database show the country was among the top five importers of ornamental fishes by trade value in 2023. The other four leading importers were the United States, the European Union, China, and Malaysia.

Overall the industry operates in around 125 countries and is worth $15-30 billion a year, according to a 2019 paper co-authored by John Pinnegar, scientific advisor to the Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science. This paper was based on a presentation by aquarist Hans-Georg Evers.

The number of UK fishkeepers has trended downwards in recent years, notwithstanding a Covid-19 lockdown-related spike in sales. But broadly speaking, Haywood says, the aquarium industry is expected to grow, as has been reported in research papers and market projections for the coming years.

Haywood, who has spent decades in the business after first being “bit” by the hobby at the tender age of 10, says he isn’t opposed to the trade flourishing. He believes fishkeeping is a “wonderful hobby” that allows people to get close to nature and inspires individuals to “take more care of the world around them.”

But he looks at the industry from two unique viewpoints: He’s the owner of an aquatic study and breeding center called OSAquatics, as well as the chair of the conservation nonprofit Seahorse Trust. With that combined perspective, he thinks the industry needs to change — quite drastically.

The problems — and solutions — that he points to center on the UK and the trade in freshwater fishes. Nonetheless, they provide insights into the wider global aquarium trade’s present state and its possible future.

Gray Areas

Freshwater fishes, particularly tropical ones, dominate the ornamental trade. The CEFAS paper found that the hobby involves more than 5,000 freshwater species. Fish are typically exported from Asia and South America, and around 90% of tropical freshwater species in trade are captive bred, according to the paper.

Although breeding farm sizes can vary, intensive production is common and supply chains can be complex. As with intensive production of farmed food animals, the trade involves the use of products like pharmaceuticals, as well as other veterinary practices. Farmers use hormones to induce breeding and sometimes inject pituitary gland extract of other fish into fishes they want to breed, a practice that occurs in certain food fisheries too. Antibiotics are commonly employed to tackle diseases that fish experience at high levels due to poor water quality, crowding, handling and other stress factors from captivity. Studies suggest that the use of antibiotics in the industry may contribute to these fish experiencing problems from antimicrobial resistance.

As Haywood puts it, intensive production involves a lot of unhappy fish.

“If the fish are happy, they will breed. There’s no need to do the intensive side of things,” he insists.

Many species are also caught in the wild, which has implications for their conservation. This is particularly true for marine species exploited in the trade, which are generally taken from coral reefs in Asia, Africa, Oceania, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. However, the conservation impact of this exploitation is largely unknown because oversight of the trade is so poor.

Around 10% of traded tropical freshwater fishes are also wild caught, according to the CEFAS paper, which says wild fisheries can sometimes promote freshwater conservation by providing income to people who therefore have an incentive to keep fish populations healthy.

But overexploitation is an issue, the paper reports, as are destructive fishing practices and mortality linked to poor management.

A Deadly Business

Mortality is a significant problem in the ornamental trade. As a 2016 paper highlighted, many wild fishes are captured but then discarded prior to export due to damaged fins, small size, or other issues that could render them unsellable.

“Losses” (to use the industry’s commerce-based language) also happen once imported fishes reach retailers. A 2014 analysis involving over a dozen UK stores, which was undertaken as part of a thesis, found mortality rates of 3-10%. The analysis assessed a range of factors that played a role in mortalities, such as the number and variety of fishes in tanks, and whether the fishes were wild caught or captive bred.

Haywood also says post-sale deaths after buyers bring fish home are likely significant, although they are not officially measured in the UK.

Deaths can occur during the transport of fishes between countries, too. According to Svein Fosså, vice president of the trade association Ornamental Fish International, traders aim to keep transport mortalities low and mostly succeed in doing so, due to the industry being professionalized over the past few decades. He says the bigger traders report to him that persistent mortalities over 0.5% would lead them to look for other suppliers. Keeping mortalities low is necessary for “the best possible welfare and health” of fishes, says Fosså, and for economic reasons, as the cost of logistics, such as air freight fees, is now very high.

Still, the transport-related body count can be significant with such a large trade. The UK, for instance, imported over 19 million live ornamental fishes from outside the EU in 2020, according to figures provided by the Animal and Plant Health Agency in response to Freedom of Information requests. That same year, the figures show that nearly 360,000 live ornamental fishes imported from non-EU countries were recorded as dead on arrival.

These figures exclude the millions of live trout imported for breeding purposes in 2020 — fishes that are both consumed and kept in ornamental ponds in the country — and their transport mortalities.

A 2017 paper asserted that across the global ornamental fish supply chain, mortality rates vary dramatically and can range from as low as 2% to as high as 73%, due to the stressors involved in handling, transport, and other factors.

Lessening the Aquarium Trade’s Harms

To address the trade’s “gray areas,” Haywood wants to see a future where more fishes are responsibly captive bred in the countries where they’re sold. To advance this vision, he’s put his money where his mouth is. Although he used to import fishes to sell, he now only trades the select aquatic organisms he breeds himself.

Haywood is not calling for an absolute end to imports and supports initiatives like the Amazon Research Center for Ornamental Fishes that seek to ensure sustainable production of ornamental fishes abroad. But he believes the UK market should mainly be limited to species that hobbyists can keep alive and happy, which are captive bred on British soil where possible.

To achieve this change, Haywood says, the government should limit the import licenses it issues to a smaller list of freshwater genera and species. “We don’t need as many flavors as we’ve got,” he argues.

Many governments, including the UK, maintain lists of permitted freshwater fishes to prohibit imports of fishes who could cause havoc if released into the natural environment (illicit dumping of fishes into waterways is a problem in the trade). The UK does not have a similar list for marine ornamental species, although there are some limits on imports of these animals due to global trade restrictions.

Haywood also stresses that reining in imports would limit the trade’s carbon-intensive air travel, as fishes are typically transported — in bags of water — on planes.

“It’s ridiculous that we’re flying water around the world” in the climate crisis, he says.

Responsible Choices

Haywood sees education as key to any transformation in the trade. He says hobbyists’ knowledge of how the industry operates is very limited, giving them little understanding of how to make responsible choices.

He suggests that retailers worldwide could increase hobbyists’ awareness through the educational labelling of fishes. These labels should explain the “milestones” in the fishes’ lives, such as whether they were raised on farms or captured in the wild, and their International Union Conservation of Nature Red List status, says Haywood.

It’s important to note, however, that Red List assessments for many ornamental species in trade are dated. A study published earlier this year found that 14 of the top 20 marine ornamental species imported into the European Union between 2014 and 2021 have Red List assessments that are more than 10 years old. Other analysis has shown that the assessments often use old sources. So Red List information would need to be shared with the necessary context.

And before consumers can be educated, importers may need some knowledge-building too. Haywood says retailers rarely know the detailed backstory of imported fishes because traceability in the trade is “nonexistent.” Similarly, the CEFAS paper highlighted a need for “better traceability for both wild-caught and tank-reared fish” in the industry.

The changes that Haywood advocates for would likely lead to fishes being more expensive, due to the increased costs involved in less intensive and more sustainable production abroad or responsible captive-breeding at home.

This may be a tough pill to swallow for some, according to Fosså. He says consumers are “very price conscious” and often shop around for the “cheapest products.”

For Haywood, changing that mentality is part of the point. He insists that fishkeeping comes with responsibility. Just as people will pay more for goods that are considered sustainable or seek responsible breeders for their pet dogs and cats, the same should be true for ornamental fishes. Haywood tries to instill this message of responsibility in his customers.

“We are taking this planet over and making a bit of a mess,” he says. “If we can all put our heads up and make a little difference, that may get momentum going for everybody to make a difference.”

Previously in The Revelator:

Saving Living Jewels: One Woman’s Mission to Shine a Light on the Ornamental Fish Trade