The next time you find yourself admiring exotic and colorful reef fish in a bubbling aquarium in your doctor’s office, think about how those beautiful creatures got there. Chances are they were scooped up from their natural coral reef habitats in Hawaii or Indonesia or the Philippines after getting caught in nets, stunned by cyanide spray, and all but blown up by explosives (which also destroy coral habitat—itself a living organism).
From there the critters are individually trapped in tiny bags with a small amount of water, crammed into a dark box, flown to some destination thousands of miles away, and then trucked to pet stores. Their next stop is a likely death within a year of entering captivity.
Suddenly, the idea of keeping tropical fish in a water tank at home doesn’t sound so appealing, right? The documentary The Dark Hobby tells us a lot about a brutal industry that is almost entirely unregulated, and not for want of efforts to get protections written into law. The emphasis in the film is on Hawaii, where a million or more reef fish are taken every year by commercial collectors—some of whom seem to act like pirates from surveillance footage we see—to sell to retailers.
The long road to passing meaningful laws governing commercial trapping is discussed by scientists and legal experts, and why individual coastlines on individual islands in the 50th state have had to establish their own local ordinances in the absence of common-sense measures applying everywhere. Frankly, there’s not a lot of hope one feels about these issues by the time The Dark Hobby is done. But as compensation, there is a lot of spectacular footage to see of coral reef fish in the wild, living what sounds like very full lives as social animals who work and play cooperatively, and keep their homes (the reefs) clean and healthy. Strongly recommended. Aud: E, I, J, H, C, P.