Info on quinaldine effect on corals

Bruce Carlson carlson at soest.hawaii.edu
Fri Oct 18 22:49:45 EDT 1996


Marcy, 

Your statement, on the face of it, does not "stand to reason".  The blue 
ringed octopus releases poison into the environment to stun and kill 
shrimp.  Does that impact delicate ecosystems?  I am not convinced that 
quinaldine in small doses has any negative "permanent" effect on the 
environment. It does have a very beneficial effect when collecting small, 
delicate and hole-dwelling fishes.  There is far less stress and potential 
harm to these fishes when handled in an anesthetised state rather than 
thrashing around in a net.  There are safe anethestics used for all other 
creatures, and for now, quinaldine is the anesthetic of choice among 
scientists and aquarium professionals.  That said, I am not an advocate of 
the wholesale release of this anesthetic to the general public and fish 
collectors.  Highly concentrated solutions and heavy doses can be 
detrimental (in the extreme, we can say with 100% certainty that corals 
will not live in pure quinaldine!).  The use of quinaldine should be 
regulated but allowed for scientific and related purposes. 

I will call the folks you mentioned and read their reports.  The more 
data that is available the better for making an objective conclusion. 

Bruce Carlson 

On Fri, 18 Oct 1996, coral wrote: 

> Regarding quinaldine, my understanding is that its use does have some  
> negative impacts on reefs and reef fishes.  It stands to reason that any  
> poison used to stun a fish is potent and will impact delicate  
> ecosystems. Contact Nancy Daves at NMFS (301) 713-2319, and Georgia  
> Kranmore (813) 570-5305 at NMFS for their studies.  
>  
> Marcy Roth 
> Coral Forest 
> --  
> Coral Forest 
> 400 Montgomery Street, Suite 400 
> San Francisco, CA 94104 USA 
> (415) 788-REEF (7333) 
> Fax (415) 331-4064 
> E-mail: coral at igc.apc.org 
> Web site: http://www.blacktop.com/coralforest 
>  
>  



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