RE: illegal fish importation

Barry Meiklejohn (fisher at ozemail.com.au)
Sun, 14 Jul 1996 10:13:53 +1000

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From: peter.unmack at ASU.Edu[SMTP:peter.unmack at ASU.Edu]
Subject: RE: illegal fish importation

"I'm the first to admit that
situations of this kind are uncommon. But, I can't define how slight
the risk is as I have no knowledge in this field. That is for a
vetinarian to determine"

OK Peter, if the risk is slight and you can't define how slight, why aren't the studies being done. The point here is that the advisors to the people that make the decisions are saying "There is this risk", but as I understand it there is no one working
on showing what the risk may be and how slight it is? Therefore the subject does become very contentious because of many of the points raised earlier in the debate re hobbyist/scientist.

"Diseases are amazing things, look at the redfin virus (Perca
fluviatilis). The virus is only known from Australia and it appears to
primarily affect redfin which are introduced....
No one knows where the virus came from except that it is
probably a more recent thing otherwise it would have been detected
earlier as it's effects are pretty obvious."

I was just wondering whether this disease may have been something that was native to Australia that the Redfin didn't like, couldn't cope with??? Would be nice for a change :-)

Can we please try and finally kill this garbage about oktediensis.
Oktediensis primarily occur in tributaries to the Ok Tedi River. They
were never abundant in the mainstem as it constituted somewhat different
habitat which was dominated by rubrostriata. Ok Tedi rubros are
probably under greater threat. Only the mainstem has been dominated by
pollution from the mine. Please read page 132 of Jerry's new book. And
I'm trying just to pick on Barry on this one, we've all heard it many
times from various sources.

OK point taken but I was trying to use this more as an illustration of reasons why people may justify their desire rather than a specific example of something going wrong...

Just as an aside here, I found it interesting at the Canberra convention last year, two opposing viewpoints as we have been discussing. Gerry showed a slideshow of his trip to Irian Jaya with the Freeman mining Company and told/showed us how the company
was looking after the environment. Next day Heiko showed us his slideshow through the same area and showed us the destruction of the river downstream from the mine.

Sorry no judgements, rumours etc, here just a good illustration of two different viewpoints.

Tootles

Barry.