Q: How can you be a non-profit and sell things for a profit?
A: If you think about it a little, all sorts of non-profits sell things for a profit - Goodwill Industries, museum and public aquaria giftshops, schools etc. Non-profit means that as a business entity we cannot make a profit, and that our basic purpose is philanthropic in nature. All of our profits go back into the various projects we work on (and also pay the expenses of the operations, such as rent, cost of fish, etc)
Q: Won't net-caught fish always be more expensive?
A: No. Cyanide itself can be a major expense for those collectors who use it. Although absolute yields are lower for those using nets, the costs are also lower. A hidden cost to the whole trade is that mortality in fish caught with cyanide is quite high. Wholesalers and importers therefore include their estimates of mortality when determining what they will pay for a fish. This results in much lower source prices for the fish. We expect our mortality rates to be substantially lower than the industry norm simply because cyanide is not used. We can therefore pay a higher price to the often impoverished collectors while at the same time providing highly competitive wholesale prices. We will also be developing improved husbandy programs to further reduce in-transit mortality.
Q: Why do you sell tank-raised and 'farmed' fish.
A: While stopping cyanide and other destructive fishing practices is our primary goal, we also support efforts for the hobby to become as self-sustaining as possible. It's often difficult to determine what amount of fishing can be done for a given species in a given area - there simply hasn't been much research to collect the data. Farmed fish eliminate the impact altogether.
Q: If I have only some fish in my store marked 100% Net Caught Phillipine , won't people assume that the others might have been caught with cyanide and stop buying them?
A: You should explain that the certification is a guarantee of origin. Many fish in the trade are not collected with cyanide (for example, it is almost non-existant for florida/caribbean fish). Just as organically grown vegetables in your grocers produce department do not mean that the rest are poisoned. 100% Net Caught just means that we can assure the buyer of the origin of the fish. Of course, buying ALL of your fish from the EcoVitality GoodFish program eliminates this issue altogether!