Enhancing CITES to Protect Marine Ornamental Fish

• Pages: 59-71
• Date: 01 July 2025
• Published date: 01 July 2025
• Author: Emme Lighthouse
• Subject Matter: Administrative & Public Law

JULY/AUGUST 2025 ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER 55 ELR 10411

SAVING NEMO:

ENHANCING CITES TO PROTECT

MARINE ORNAMENTAL FISH

by Emme Lighthouse

Emme Lighthouse is a 2026 J.D. Candidate at the George Washington University Law School.

Just keep swimmi ng, just keep swimming ...

—D ory, Finding Nemo1

With her catchy song, Dory, an upbeat blue tang, encour-

aged Marlin, a grumpy clownsh, to stay brave while

swimming into a deep trench to retrieve a fa llen scuba

mask.2 Her adventures with Marlin to save his son, Nemo,

endeared both these characters, and the sh species they

are based on, to audiences young and old.3

Nemo’s dramatic capture from the coral reef and place-

ment into a private aquarium reects a modern-day reality.

Millions of brightly colored vertebrates, invertebrates, and

corals are taken f rom the wild to fuel the global demand

for display in private and public aquariums.4 Like Nemo,

the vast majority of marine aquarium  sh are from delicate

coral reef habitats that are a lready experiencing increased

stress due to climate change and other anthropogenic fac-

tors.5 Despite the movie’s eort to portray the aquarium

trade in a negative light, the release of Finding Nemo cre-

ated a cruelly ironic uptick in demand for clownsh that

accelerated decimation of coral reefs in the South Pacic.6

e marine aquarium trade sta rted in Sri Lank a in the

1930s as a small-scale export shery, expanded to Hawaii

and the Philippines in the 1950s, and became an estab-

lished global, multimillion trade by t he 1970s.7 As of 2024,

50 to 60 countries export marine ornamenta l sh, with top

exporters including Indonesia, Sri Lank a, and the Philip-

pines.8 ose  sh are imported to countries like the United

1. F N (Pixar Animation Studios 2003).

2. Id.

3. See Rotten Tomatoes, Finding Nemo, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/

nding_nemo (last visited May 3, 2025).

4. C W  ., U N E P

W C M C (UNEP-WCMC), F

O  A: T G T  M O S-

 6 (2003).

5. Mark D. Spalding & Barbara E. Brown, Warm-Water Coral Reefs and Cli-

mate Change, 350 S 769, 771 (2015).

6. James Prosek, Beautiful Friendship, 217 N’ G 120 (2010).

7. Andrew W. Bruckner, e Importance of the Marine Ornamental Reef Fish

Trade in the Wider Caribbean, 53 R  B T 127, 127

(2005).

8. Monica V. Biondo & Rainer P. Burki, Monitoring the Trade in Marine

Ornamental Fishes rough the European Trade Control and Expert System

TRACES: Challenges and Possibilities, 108 M P’ art. 103620, at 3

(2019); Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild

Fauna and Flora (CITES) Technical Workshop on Marine Ornamental

Fishes, Developing an Evidence-Led Species Prioritisation Framework, para.

6 (May 7-10, 2024), https://cites.org/sites/default/les/eng/prog/marine_

States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and members of the

European Union (EU).9

e marine ornamental trade diers from the freshwa-

ter ornamental trade in important ways. Ninety percent

of freshwater ornamental aquarium sh are bred in c ap-

tivity.10 In contrast, only between 1% and 10% of marine

aquarium ornamental sh are bred in c aptivity.11 e other

90%-99% are wild-caught from cora l reefs, with rami-

cations for their local ecosystems.12 In addition, the fresh-

water trade is much larger than its ma rine counterpart;

marine ornamentals are t hought to consist of only 10% of

the total ornamental sh trade globally.13 Data concerning

the two trades are of ten lumped or mixed together, leading

to uncertainty about the true trade numbers.14

e marine aquarium hobby focuses on creating minia-

ture reef ecosystems that create demand for several thou-

sand species.15 Between 1,040 and 2,300 species of sh

have been found in the global trade.16 Some of those species

(around 100) are unevaluated or data-decient under the

ornamental_shes/workshops/brisbane_052024/CITES%20marine%20

ornamental%20shes%20workshop%20-%20OATA-OFI%20paper%20

(Final).pdf [hereinafter OATA/OFI Framework Proposal].

9. Biondo & Burki, supra note 8; CITES, Species Specic Matters: Conserva-

tion Management of and Trade in Marine Ornamental Fishes, para. 7, CITES

Doc. CoP18 Doc. 94 (May 23-June 2, 2019) [hereinafter Conservation

Management of MOF].

10. P M, F  A O  

U N (FAO) G R P, T O-

 F T: P  C  O F:

T-M  L A 1 (2010).

11. CITES Secretariat & UNEP-WCMC, International Trade in Non-CITES

Listed Marine Ornamental Fish: International Trade, Conservation Status,

Management and Legislation for Non-CITES Marine Ornamental Fish in

Support of the Implementation of Decision 18.296 [Updated] 1 (2024) [here-

inafter International Trade in Non-CITES]; OATA/OFI Framework Proposal,

supra note 8, para. 44.

12. See Monica V. Biondo & Rainer P. Burki, A Systematic Review of the Orna-

mental Fish Trade With Emphasis on Coral Reef Fishes—An Impossible Task,

10 A 1, 12 (2020).

13. Biondo & Burki, supra note 8, at 1.

14. Biondo & Burki, supra note 12, at 11; see also Andrew L. Rhyne et al.,

Revealing the Appetite of the Marine Aquarium Fish Trade: e Volume and

Biodiversity of Fish Imported Into the United States, 7 PLoS O e35808, at

7 (2012).

15. Biondo & Burki, supra note 12, at 12.

16. Andrew L. Rhyne et al., Expanding Our Understanding of the Trade in Ma-

rine Aquarium Animals, 2017 PJ e2949, at 7, 15 (2017); OATA/OFI

Framework Proposal, supra note 8, annex paras. 4, 42; International Trade

in Non-CITES, supra note 11, at 6. e dierence from the literature is ex-

plained by condensing dierent color morphs, excluding only rarely caught

species, and updated taxonomy. OATA/OFI Framework Proposal, supra note

8, annex para. 42.

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