Not to start an argument
but there are a couple things I'd like to address. Fish prices: Are the prices you are looking at "landed in your aquarium" or FOB country of origin? For example, I used to be able to buy a damselfish for .05 U.S.D. in the Philippines. The problem was it cost over $2.00 U.S.D to get that fish from the Philippines to Miami. So that fish didn't really cost .05, it cost $2.05.
Mom & Pops: It is definitely a sad thing that the Mom & Pop shop is fading away. They are ( or were) the backbone of the hobby as well as the business. They had to know a lot more about the animals they kept in order to stay in business. ( You don;t last too long if you don;t have livestock to sell along with your merchandise.
) You just don;t find that kind of knowledge in MOST of the current pet store employees around the country. ( There are some with it, you just have to wade through a lot of them to find them.
)
Basement sellers: For every void, a new niche is developed. You may have been bringing in more fish and corals than any one store but how many stores where YOU dealing with? How many people were you selling to? When I was at my last retail store, there was a core of dedicated hobbyists that shopped our store as well as others. In a 100 mile radius, there were 7 stores that were all visited by that same core of people. How do I know? 2 reasons, #1- They told us where else they went. #2- I was down at the wholesaler's one day to look for a special order fish (for one of those people) that was not that common. The process was that noone was allowed in the fish room until the place officially opened so it was quite common for a number of stores to be in the office waiting area 5 or 10 minutes before they opened. I had asked one of the employees, who came into the office, if they had the fish I was looking for ( to get a jump on my competitors
) and someone overheard me and asked me if that was for a particular customer? ( Let's just call him Bob here to protect the innocent.
) When I said "Yes" he told me that he was there for the same fish for the same guy. Bottom line, there were 4 stores, including myself, all looking for the same fish for the same person. So it's easy to see why any one store may not bring in a lot of stock per item but carry a larger variety of items. As for outbuying a single store, our store brought in LD3 containers of fish just for our 1 store. That was back in the early 1980s and yet, we didn't deplete the ocean to the point that there were no fish available for today's hobbyist. Hmmmmmm? I think there is more to the depletion than over collecting.
Availability: there are multiple reasons why availability can be a problem. Weather, diving conditions, LIFE, broken boat, all can cause a lack of stock to sell. I don;t think it's fair to make the statement you made and directly link it to an environmental/ fish stock reason. For all you know, the wholesaler may have had a standing order from a customer for "X" amount of fish and they only got in "X" amount of fish that week so everyone else loses. What of "X" was 100 pieces? It's hard to believe that collecting 100 pieces of a specie would be considered a low stock issue.
As for what we humans are doing to the planet, I agree wholeheartedly. We are the planet's biggest offenders. I do believe that eventually, it will all even out as just as the huge dinosaurs couldn't live for ever, neither will man unless he changes his ways. A great example of this is an aquarium. If you take a running fish tank and let it become the stankiest, dirtiest tank you can find, just by leaving it alone, eventually, through the process of biological filtration, that tank will once again be able to hold fish. It may not be quick, or pretty, but it will happen. That's the lesson here. We don;t give the oceans time to replenish or the ability to cleanse itself. The "triangle of trash" in the Pacific is proof that we have been using the oceans as a toilet for way too long. The runoff from farm chemicals kill off waterways and their inhabitants. ( We here in FL saw that first hand.) So what are we going to do about that?