Aquatic Zoos - Captive Animals Protection Society
Aquatic Zoos - Captive Animals Protection Society
Aquatic Zoos - Captive Animals Protection Society
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Using the search engines available on the British Library computers for the three databases, entries that<br />
contained the names of the 31 public aquaria investigated were sought. In order to find any possible<br />
scientific article mentioning the public aquaria in any capacity (even if the article was not a study<br />
undertaken in the aquarium or by the aquarium researchers, but just a reference to it) different<br />
combinations of names, new or old versions, hyphenated or not, or the name of the town where the<br />
public aquarium is located together with the word ‘aquarium’, were used through the searching process<br />
involving all the entry fields. As a result of using this method it was hoped that no article mentioning any<br />
of the UK public aquaria investigated would ‘slip the net’.<br />
From the millions of article entries that were sought covering a period of 25 years only seven references<br />
involving the public aquaria investigated were found. These references represent 23% of the UK public<br />
aquaria. Taking into account the time scope of the databases and the size of the aquaria sample, this<br />
means that the UK public aquarium industry as a whole publish an average of one scientific article every<br />
30 years. No entries since 2002 were found, and the 2002 entry corresponded to an acknowledgement<br />
of one researcher thanking one of the public aquarium for having provided him with some anemones for<br />
some stress-inducing experimentation (which raises the whole different issue of ethically acceptable<br />
research). The next entry was 1999, so in total only one article mentioning half the UK public aquarium<br />
population in the last four years.<br />
In order to check that the databases were covering all articles involving aquaria, a search for the<br />
keywords ‘aquaria’ or ‘aquarium’ was performed. The result showed 5,187 full articles from ESTAR, and<br />
18,708 from Zoological Records and Biological Abstracts together. Using the words ‘fish’, for instance,<br />
produced 66,932 entries for ESTAR and 374,105 entries for the other two databases. Therefore, the<br />
databases do cover fish and aquarium research, and nonetheless only seven entries were found for the<br />
public aquaria studied.<br />
These results clearly show that scientific research is not, by any means, an integral part of the UK public<br />
aquaria work, despite some public aquaria claiming otherwise. Indeed, two or three public aquaria seem<br />
to be involved, according to their own literature, with some Universities in some scientific research, but<br />
either this is a fairly recent development that has not produced many scientific papers yet, or this is not<br />
‘scientific’ research per se because it is not providing scientific papers available to the scientific<br />
community (perhaps only internal ‘husbandry’ papers for the trade, which could be found in any<br />
profession without any claim that scientific research is in the making).<br />
Perhaps the ‘research’ claim comes from the fact that some students may have used public aquaria as<br />
the site of any of their pre-graduate dissertations/assignments –or similar ‘training’ activities– which do<br />
not produce scientific articles or theses. If that is the case maybe an ‘education’ claim could be more<br />
appropriate, although providing a site for someone to develop their own project hardly qualifies as<br />
‘teaching’. Or perhaps the public aquaria attempts –successful or not– to breed, feed or transport<br />
aquarium stock are interpreted as scientific research, although this would be as misleading as describing<br />
rare-breed pet breeders or professional gardeners as scientists. Most likely, though, is that public<br />
aquaria, as any other zoological collection, are responding to the conservation/education/research<br />
criteria imposed by the European zoo regulations, as well as executing PR and marketing strategies first<br />
developed by the World Zoo Organisation (WZO) a few years ago through its International Zoo<br />
Marketing Conferences.<br />
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