1 in 4 aquarium fish “rejected”

Export data and international trade records have long suggested that millions of fish caught for home aquariums die along the complex supply chain from fish wholesalers to hobbyists’ tanks. But these trade statistics, in many cases the only source of information available, omit a crucial stage in the aquarium fish industry: what happens to fish before they start that long journey up the supply chain. Now, a new study has revealed that at least a quarter of the home-aquarium-bound fish caught in Papua New Guinea are rejected, and usually dumped back in the ocean, with negative consequences for the environment. It’s a toll that, until now, had been largely overlooked.

Read the rest of my story for Hakai magazine here.