'Nemo' May Hook Public on Plight of Marine Life

Like movies, the trade in marine animals is very much a Southern California industry. The business is dependent on the long supply chain that starts in the coral reefs of the Pacific and Indian oceans and leads to 104th Street near Los Angeles International Airport, a stretch known as Fish Street and regarded as the nucleus of the world's aquarium business.

There, about a dozen firms import live fish, coral, shrimp, crabs and other sea creatures, which arrive by air in foam-lined packing boxes from such places as Fiji, the Philippines and Indonesia. The animals then are resold to pet and fish stores across North America and Europe.

This is a sensitive time for the industry. It has fought off proposals for federal legislation to curtail the numbers and types of sea life that could be imported to the United States, in part by promising to develop a policing program.

At least one nonprofit organization is promoting an independent certification process to help ensure that tropical fish caught in the wild are treated humanely, similar to the dolphin-safe campaign that informs buyers of canned tuna that, presumably, no dolphins were netted in the course of catching tuna.

The Honolulu-based Marine Aquarium Council is in the early stages of a program to award its stamp of approval to businesses within the pet fish supply chain -- from reef to retailer -- that meet its standards. Its goal is to eliminate harmful collection methods, such as the use of poisonous sodium cyanide to stun wild fish, and to reduce the mortality rate of aquarium fish during transport and storage.

The group also is endorsing attempts to farm-raise tropical fish as a way to avoid endangering species and their reef habitats and to keep hobbyists' aquariums filled with eye-catching specimens. The best success story to come from the captive breeding of tropical fish involves the clownfish, the same species from which the star of "Finding Nemo" hails.

The council hopes the movie will help spotlight its efforts to clean up the industry and "alert new potential hobbyists about the good and the bad ways that tropical fish are harvested."

The organization already has used the film as a marketing opportunity: With the help of Cohen of Sea Dwelling, one of the largest marine fish distributors, it set up an aquarium of clownfish and other marine animals at the "Finding Nemo" premiere party last Sunday.