Aquatic Zoos - Captive Animals Protection Society

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SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH IN UK PUBLIC AQUARIA The European Zoo Directive (Council Directive 1999/22/EC) aimed to standardise legislation regarding zoological collections by not only creating a licensing system in all the countries that do not have one, but also by setting up the criteria that each member state should use to assess whether a collection should receive a license or not. The Directive requires Member States to ensure that all zoos “participate in research from which conservation benefits accrue to the species, and/or training in relevant conservation skills, and/or the exchange of information relating to species conservation and/or, when appropriate, captive breeding, repopulation or reintroduction of species into the wild”. Although the use of the ‘and/or’ means that zoological collection do not need to do research if they do the other conditions, if no captive breeding or reintroduction takes place, and no conservation training or exchange of conservation information takes place (not any type of information), research may be the only alternative. In the UK we have had a zoo licensing system since the early 1980s (Zoo Licensing Act 1981), which is backed up, following section 9 of the Act, by the Secretary of State’s Standards of Modern Zoo Practice. Recently, though, a new law was passed, the Zoo Licensing Act 1981 (Amendment) Regulations 2002, which effectively embraces the points raised by the European Zoo directive, including the ones mentioning research. Because many zoological collections cannot claim they do conservation activities, modern zoological collections, including public aquaria, often claim that they do research instead. The presence of exotic species in public aquaria might be of interest to researchers looking for subjects to investigate, but it is likely that the conditions in which those species are kept do not facilitate the researchers’ work. Abnormal behaviour or visitor presence might make public aquaria less attractive to researchers, many tanks do not offer a complete unobstructed view to those who want to make detailed observations, or public aquaria may not be well suited to experimental replication where more than one tank is required (Smale, 2003). If researchers do not go to public aquaria, perhaps the aquarium staff, or otherwise students on training, can do the research instead. However, investigations carried out by non formally qualified researchers might not contribute to scientific knowledge if they are not published or made available for peer review. Therefore, although any investigation of any kind could be considered research in its widest sense of the word, only scientific research that is made available to the scientific community for scrutiny is what the Zoo Directive probably means when using the ‘research’ criteria. In a previous study (Casamitjana & Turner 2001) evidence that UK zoological collections publish very little scientific research at least by the usual channels was unearthed. In this study the same methods were used to investigate UK public aquaria only. The method used to quantify the contribution of public aquaria to scientific research was based on analysing the final stage of any research investigation: the publication of papers in scientific books or journals. There are reference publications available to aid bibliographic research, which compile records of references of all published scientific material on a whole range of topics. Three of these databases were used for the assessment: Zoological Records, Biological Abstracts (both published by BIOSIS), and ESTAR , the Electronic Storage and Retrieval System of the British Library. In order to investigate the research that has been undertaken on wild animals the best publication to use is the Zoological Records, which exists in both hard copy and as an electronic database. This is a wellknown and widely used reference work published since 1864. The database provides powerful searching features for quick retrieval of references from over 6,500 international journals, review annuals, monographs, meeting proceedings, books, and reports, from over 100 countries. The database has an international coverage and has no geographical or linguistic restrictions. 90
The criteria to include entries of publications in the Zoological Record stated by BIOSIS in its website follows: “Zoological Record Coverage and Subject Criteria Zoological Record products cover publications on all aspects of zoology. BIOSIS aims to comprehensively cover traditional areas of zoology, such as ecology, physiology, taxonomy, evolution, life history, morphology, and nomenclature. More experimental applied topics, such as applied biology, biochemistry, immunology, toxicology and veterinary medicine are covered selectively. An item is relevant for coverage if it contains material on the biology of an animal, but particular emphasis is given to natural biology and systematics. BIOSIS attempts to be exhaustive in its coverage of systematic zoological literature. Papers dealing with commercial activities such as fishing or fisheries, farming or agriculture etc., are included in Zoological Record only if some aspect of the biology of the animal is discussed, or if historical or conservation aspects of such activities are covered. Source documents dealing with experimental or domestic animals usually are not indexed in Zoological Record unless the systematics, evolution, distribution, or biology of the animal in the wild is discussed in some detail. Purely experimental papers are not included. However, source documents which deal with unusual animals used in laboratory experiments are indexed. Zoological Record coverage normally excludes Homo sapiens, but papers which discuss humans and animals will be covered for the animals provided that they are within general scope. Papers discussing extinct relatives of man (eg., Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis) will be included. Parasitology studies are included in Zoological Record provided that some zoological aspect (eg., taxonomy or physiology) of either the parasite or the host is discussed. Both the parasite and host receive index entries in the appropriate sections. Papers discussing techniques or methods used in areas which are not covered, but having definite implications for use by zoologists are indexed in Zoological Record. For example, a paper discussing a new method of determining basal metabolic rate could be considered important to an animal physiologist. Therefore, the paper would generally be included, as long as the technique is performed on an animal. If the technique discussed in the paper is performed on a human, it would not be included.” The second database, Biological Abstracts, is the world’s largest abstract publication for life sciences journals published world-wide. According to its web-page: “Total Journal Coverage: BA indexes articles from over 4,000 serials each year. This publication also offers: Over 360,000 new citations each year, nearly 90% of citations include an abstract by the author, and almost 5.8 million archival records are available back to 1980. BA articles originate from journals all around the world, and cover topics in every life sciences discipline”. The third database is the Electronic Storage and Retrieval System (ESTAR) of the British library, only accessible from the computer workstations of the library itself. The ESTAR system provides electronic access to the full text of over 4000 major journals held by the British Library, mainly in the fields of science, technology and medicine (at the time of writing 4,049 journals and 2,384,960 articles were accessible, all searchable with a full text search engine –not only searching for keywords). The three databases can be accessed electronically from the British library, covering the period from 1978 to today as far as Zoological Records is concerned, from 1985 to today as far as Biological Abstracts is concerned, and from the early 1990s as far as ESTAR is concerned. They cover all journals and books where articles about public aquaria research may be published, including the journals Ichthyologica, Aquarium Sciences and Conservation, Aquarium Digest International, Freshwater & Marine Aquarium, Aquarium News, International Zoo Yearbook, Ratel and many more. 91
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AQUATIC ZOOS A critical study of UK
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CONSERVATION IN UK PUBLIC AQUARIA -
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It is not just fish and aquatic inv
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METHODS This study used two main me
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Public Aquaria visited, 2004 Rand.n
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UK PUBLIC AQUARIA PROFILE In this c
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It is possible that there are more
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95 Tomato clownfish 9 22 198 96 Ban
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84 Small eyed ray 25 0% 66% 85 Pacu
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Exotic versus local taxa kept in UK
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27 Common sunstar 10 Cod 15 28 Cutt
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ANIMAL WELFARE IN UK PUBLIC AQUARIA
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Stereotypic behaviour, also known a
Page 27 and 28:
Figure 7. Regal tang circling in a
Page 29 and 30:
These categories have been defined
Page 31 and 32:
However, because not all the animal
Page 33 and 34:
clownfish and the case of ‘handli
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e called ‘handling’ in one otte
Page 37 and 38:
Relative frequency of types of fish
Page 39 and 40: column shows the percentage of indi
Page 41 and 42: while performing ITB. If done very
Page 43 and 44: Branchiomyces Cotton wool disease
Page 45 and 46: Figure 20. Examples of evidence of
Page 47 and 48: its nose opening up the same wound
Page 49 and 50: Centre 13 Report 10 Parasitic infec
Page 51 and 52: The common octopus will die if the
Page 53 and 54: 2. Large amounts of food remains pa
Page 55 and 56: Evidence of one starfish having los
Page 57 and 58: CONSERVATION IN UK PUBLIC AQUARIA M
Page 59 and 60: there are obvious differences in sc
Page 61 and 62: Animals in UK public aquaria part o
Page 63 and 64: threatened species is totally wrong
Page 65 and 66: Type PA Release back to wild % DO N
Page 67 and 68: Table 14 shows an estimation of the
Page 69 and 70: Some may say that removing fish fro
Page 71 and 72: The lack of publicity on joint proj
Page 73 and 74: insight. It has been said that the
Page 75 and 76: species than in the past), but they
Page 77 and 78: EDUCATION IN UK PUBLIC AQUARIA Cons
Page 79 and 80: Figure 34. Example of the type of e
Page 81 and 82: Figure 35 shows the averages of per
Page 83 and 84: 7 Beadlet anemone 145 8 Lesser spot
Page 85 and 86: Figure 38. Example of a sign that i
Page 87 and 88: Finding a close up face of a ‘fea
Page 89: thinking that indeed Nature can be
Page 93 and 94: EXHIBIT DESIGN IN UK PUBLIC AQUARIA
Page 95 and 96: Sometimes some species may be house
Page 98 and 99: Figure 48 (previous page). Types of
Page 100 and 101: Almost half of the public aquaria (
Page 102 and 103: The fact that in the majority of UK
Page 104 and 105: more taxa, and 1.3% more than 20. T
Page 106 and 107: Figure 60. Examples of dirty and un
Page 108 and 109: Figure 63. One of the ‘futuristic
Page 110 and 111: Appendix 6, 6.11 There must be adeq
Page 112 and 113: educing the ambient temperature. Ba
Page 114 and 115: Figure 69. Sign advising not to tou
Page 116 and 117: Surely if there are animal welfare
Page 118 and 119: visit, and therefore in those cases
Page 120 and 121: It is not only that visitors may di
Page 122 and 123: CONCLUSIONS SPECIFIC CONCLUSIONS Fo
Page 124 and 125: Keeping and breeding seahorses in U
Page 126 and 127: Despite all the pleasing superficia
Page 128 and 129: BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson R. C. (1995).
Page 130 and 131: Broom, D.M. (1991). Assessing welfa
Page 132 and 133: Kiesh, W. (2000). Aquarium et Mycob
Page 134 and 135: Scott, G.W.; Hull, S.L. ;Rollinson,
Page 136: AQUATIC ZOOS: A critical study of U
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