We have seen the recent piece (Thursday July 29) on Good Morning Britain about aquariums which offered a sadly very confused discussion about this important subject.
We’re not providing a link because we do not want to give PETA the oxygen of publicity and it’s very unfortunate that Good Morning Britain chose to do so in this ill-researched piece.
It was hard to tell if the discussion was about public aquariums or home aquariums, wild collected or captive bred fish. Neither the presenters nor PETA seemed to know either. Those subjects are of course different.
It is incredibly disappointing and frustrating that television programmes with large audiences do not do some basic research to ensure they offer a fair overview of the subject under discussion. This piece did not allow either the public aquarium or the home aquarium sectors to properly balance the nonsense coming from PETA, such as fish being ‘ripped from their families’ in the sea.
Most home aquariums actually contain freshwater fish (which obviously do not come from the sea and shouldn’t be returned there) and 95% of these are captive reared. The marine side of the hobby does involve wild collected fish but this is a smaller part of the industry and can support communities in remote parts of the world by creating sustainable livelihoods that encourage conservation of the natural resources found on their doorsteps.
We would expect nothing less than the nonsense which came from PETA but we do expect better from Good Morning Britain and have written to the show accordingly.
