Our mission

BAR meeting featuring Richard Ross December 12th 1:00

"(most of the money going into Tonga is from Tongans living abroad, the second most is from Mormons)"

You mean like how our South of the Boarder friends send money home to their impoverished families, or some Phillipino people in Hawaii work really hard at multiple jobs to send money home to their families too?

You are all correct about the high Mormon populations in Tonga. My friend and her husband are both US college educated. Her husband has a PH.D in engineering. The following is what she told me about Tonga and the Mormons: "The King "owns" the land and leases it out to whomever he wishes. In those instances where the Mormon's actually purchased land, it was through privately held property. The LDS (Mormon) church builds schools to help educate the children. (She sees this as a positive benefit for her people.) There are LDS church buildings in almost every village ( the land is leased), but there are other churches too, including Protestant, Baptist, Catholic, etc. The LDS church only builds church meeting houses to provide for a place of worship when the membership in an area exceeds a certain number. They do not build the church or school before there is enough membership in hopes of filling the buildings. BTW, she said that non-Mormon children attend LDS schools and that the schools are not exclusionary. There is only one temple."

I guess this is like Hawaii, where English missionaries came in to convert the population and in the meantime, built schools to educate/convert the people. Some of the best private schools in the nation are in Hawaii started by missionaries. Hawaii has approximately 25% of its' school population attending private religious schools. The highest percentage private school attendance in the nation. These schools are better, in both financial resources and quality of education, and many families seek to send their children to them. It is only natural for parents to want their children to get the best education possible. My own children attended religious schools when we lived in Hawaii. (Congregational Christian/Protestant and Jewish-we still make latkes every Hanukah :) )

I was again perplexed by this statement, "The mormons have supplied Tongans with plane tickets to the US to encourage conversion and to help them emigrate. All of this is well documented.
http://books.google.com/books?id=EABPLrDovFAC&pg=PA33&lpg=PA33&dq=Tonga+..."
'It is the Mormons' stated intention to transform Tonga into the first Mormon state'

I looked up your citation. Apparently, the first author listed is a travel guide writer?

Here are some sites "out of the horses mouth" as it were : http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/contact-us/tonga
http://www.tongatapu.net.to/tonga/convictions/christianity/lds/lds.html

Many religions send missionaries around the world to encourage conversion. A high school friend of mine went on a mission for the Baptist church. She was given a plane ticket and paid for her services. My cousin's husband and her entire family were sent to South America to preach and be a Protestant minister at a church there for multiple years. I have seen Mennonite missionaries, and have had Jehovah's Witnesses come to my door. Nothing out of the ordinary as far as religious proselytization is concerned. I believe it is the intent of every religion to gather followers.

My Tongan friend's response to the plane tickets for emigration were, " To obtain higher education which is non-existent in Tonga, we need to qualify through grades, test scores, teacher recommendations; and pass entrance exams like any hopeful college student. Many LDS Tongans with college aspirations try to qualify for the BYU-Hawaii campus because most families are poor, and the university sets up a work/study scholarship program to aid the students. However, the plane tickets to fly to Hawaii from Tonga must be provided for by the students own families. The Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii is set up to provide jobs for students to help them pay for their education and expenses. Students must also maintain a certain GPA to be part of the scholarship program, similar to any other university. It is not a free ride." She doesn't know of any instances where people were given tickets to just emigrate.

I’m sorry this is longwinded, but I just wanted to make sure that she and her people were represented from her point of view. I am uneasy when people are grouped into stereotypes, regardless of race, religion, persuasion, socioeconomic status, educational back ground, etc. It is my ongoing desire and wish that we all speak well of each other and try to avoid misunderstandings. Call me idealistic, but I still hope for world peace. :)

Oh, and I apologize in advance if I misunderstood anything you were trying to say. :D
 
Thanks for the well thought out reply. :D
I think we have different perspectives on missionaries and religions, and as such, prolly shouldn't continue the conversation on line because such conversations are often rife with misunderstandings (which is happening already). I would be happy to continue to discuss it in person if you are interested. I will say I am sorry if anything I said in jest or otherwise rubbed you the wrong way, as that was absolutely not my intention.
FWIW, I also still hope for world peace too!
 
if you guys want to know why there are so many Mormon Tongans, ask a Mormon.

with that being said. Any questions?

:)

btw Lyn, very well put.
 
This topic looks like it was answered but let me add one more thing being the "Mormon" in the club.
There are an overly large number of Tongans in my church because it was one of the first places the Church sent missionaries when it was founded. Missionaries were sent to the Islands of the Pacific very early on and there was a vary large amount of Tongans, Samoans, Maori, Fijian and other Island natives converted early. Many are born into the religion now but the church still sends missionaries to these islands (I have 2 friends who went to both Tonga and Samoa). Most missionaries in the church go at their own cost and go willingly. from my experience Polynesians are a very loyal people, sticking to family and what not, They are also a spiritual people who are very faithful to what they believe.
what Lyn said about the Polynesian Cultural Center in Hawaii was correct and almost every Poly that I know at one time worked there in one form or another and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
That's all I have to say on the matter and do agree that from the outside it does look like the church is trying to convert Tonga for whatever reason, I wanted people to know why it looked that way.
thank you. Now lets talk about fish again. :)
 
So about fish....

Would a rarer (high priced fish) tend to have lower mortality rates than say a cheap one? i.e. Black Tang vs Chromis, just curious if higher priced items might undergo a bit more care through the chain of custody.
 
Thales said:
Thanks for the well thought out reply. :D
I think we have different perspectives on missionaries and religions, and as such, prolly shouldn't continue the conversation on line because such conversations are often rife with misunderstandings (which is happening already). I would be happy to continue to discuss it in person if you are interested. I will say I am sorry if anything I said in jest or otherwise rubbed you the wrong way, as that was absolutely not my intention.
FWIW, I also still hope for world peace too!

Thank you Rich, and I agree with you. I also think it is good to have different ideas and perspectives, and to be open to different ideas and perspectives. Afterall, most great leaps forward don't come about by linear thinking.

About continuing this conversation... no, I don't really want to continue this. I never really wanted to start it in the first place. We all know what "they" say about discussing politics and religion... Besides, this is quite outside of my comfort zone. I'd rather make cookies and feed people. :)

However, I felt that when blanket statements about groups of people or cultures are pronounced to everyone, which may have a negative slant to it, even in jest, there should be a pertinent reason as to why the comment was made. Also, there should be unbiased evidence to back up that statement, or it should not be made at all.

I believed from the beginning that it wasn't your intention to offend anyone, but I still felt that I needed an explanation since your comment was made publicly. I just hope no one says anything derogatory about those little green Martians, or I may have to come to their defense. :bigsmile:

I totally like and respect you, and consider myself fortunate to be able to hear you and all the other fine speakers BAR provides for our education. The mission of this club is remarkable, and something I wholeheartedly support.

BTW, I knew you would hope for world peace, as I believe, do all of our BAR family. There truly is something special and wonderful about Aquarists, at least in my observations. :)
 
sfsuphysics said:
So about fish....

Would a rarer (high priced fish) tend to have lower mortality rates than say a cheap one? i.e. Black Tang vs Chromis, just curious if higher priced items might undergo a bit more care through the chain of custody.

Yes and no. They will undoubtedly enjoy a much better pack/handling/etc but being tangs in general are poor shippers it's kinda bad example. The worst shippers are cardinals, wrasses, anthias and tangs.

I had a huge post about what I felt a huge step would be but my computer froze and I had to friggen reboot. Now I'm just too torn about the loss to repost. Maybe in a few days :( the main gist was livestock should be 10x the cost it is now!
 
O.K. this thread is NOT about religion, please if you want to discuss do it on your own time via PM. We have a fruitful conversation going on about the subject of the meeting the COC, lets keep it that way please. Dwelling on one statement is just derailing the conversation that is relative to the club, religion is not.

If the religion talk continues the thread will be locked and we will start a thread with a very specific conversation, thanks for your understanding.
 
IME clowns ship well, gobies and blennies (though there are some touchy species) Most damsels are pretty tough, sm. triggers ship well (if packed correctly) all the true groupers (not soapfish, not bettas etc...) ship ok. Tobies seem tough as nails too.
 
sfsuphysics said:
So all things being equal what's going to kill more fish? Shipping? Lousy conditions in the CoC?
Well-meaning hobbyists getting bad advice.
Seriously though, there are a lot of factors. Everything from initial collection on CAN seriously compromise a fish. And of course most fish die from the cumulative stressors of collection, holding, transport (to the US), holding (at whlslr), transport (to retailer), holding, transport (to hobbyist tank) etc...
 
sfsuphysics said:
So all things being equal what's going to kill more fish? Shipping? Lousy conditions in the CoC?


I really think they are all intertwined, poor conditions at any stage can render a fish unsuitable to ship, poor shipping practices can kill fish. Even scarier IMO is that many of the major players are in bed with one another, there's soooo much crossover. I wish we could as a group endorse some sort of certification group or collection area, but it's just too complicated.

Since we are so early in the awareness stage as hobbyists, that's what we all need to become, aware. Since captive propagation is at such an early stage of development we need to continue to support that and especially do our best to influence our suppliers by putting pressure on them and talking with our $$$
 
are there any fish which will can successfully spawn and have the young grow up in a normal aquarium, without having to do things like moving the babies to nets or specialized tanks etc?
 
Not that I know of, cardinals are the easiest that I know of AFA propagating. They go straight from larval to full fledged fish with out a planktonic stage, same with clowns, but they are being protected and the eggs are tumbled protected and oxygenated by the mouthbrooding parent. When they emerge they are very easy to raise and don't need a ton of space. They do need a separate grow out area though, you know reef tanks, something is always hungry :D
 
Like any industry during R&D things are kept low profile, even after for that matter. Take for example ORA, they've been raising coral and fish profitably for a considerable amount of time compared to other marine ornamental aquaculturalists, yet they remain an enigma AFA their day to day nuts and bolts (a.k.a. tricks of the trade).

Consider the freshwater side of the hobby. Long before you could go to a saltwater hobbyists meeting and load up with free aquacultured coral frags, you could go to a freshwater hobby club and get fish, plants, enough crap to fill a tank. The ease and resilience of raising freshwater fauna can be translated over to the complicated environmental issues of the saltwater side i.e. there is a method and there are people willing to be disciplined enough to accommodate more complicated methods if the direction is there. That's where the biologists like Rich come into play, he's open with info. and it's obvious that he wants to see what he has done built upon, juxtaposed to companies that are looking to grow tilapia from 1" to 12" in a week by feeding them wood chips. Who knows how many cans of aquacultured cuttlefish he could have sold by now :D
 
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