If there is one constant in life it seems to be that when a children’s movie is released featuring an animal, said animal will be something that kids around the world want and want as soon as possible. When it comes to more exotic critters, that can be a problem. Finding Nemo saw children demanding their own little Nemo — an orange-and-white striped clownfish — to the extent of pet stores having difficulty keeping them in stock.
With a follow-up to Finding Nemo ready for release this summer, called Finding Dory, marine biologists are already concerned with the rush to supply pet stores with another variety of fish. Finding Dory stars Ellen DeGeneres as Dory, a blue tang fish. Quartz reports that while clownfish like Nemo were already well-adapted to life as pets, that blue tang fish on the other hand do not handle captivity well. In fact, marine biologists are fearing that the attempts to capture and sell blue tang fish will endanger the species of fish as a whole.
The blue tang fish finds itself at home in the Indo-Pacific, more specifically by coral reefs, which have already had a difficult enough team clinging to existence in our ever-changing world. The fear of collection and captivity methods endangering the difficult to care for fish seems like a real one. Here’s to hoping that parents put their collective feet down on this one and instead find another kind of fish for their kids.
(via Quartz)
