The thing about clownfish is that, unlike most other pretty fish that adorn our home aquariums, many of them sold to consumers aren’t pulled from their native tropical habitats. We’ve all read about how demand for clownfish spiked in the wake of Finding Nemo-who wouldn’t want to bring home a live Disney character as a pet?-and about the ensuing global pillaging of coral reefs that ensued. But our understanding of where they’re coming from, how many of them are being harvested, and where they’re going, is murky at best.

These aren’t fish we eat they’re the bright beauties we plop in tanks as decorations. imports roughly 7-million-to-10-million ornamental fish each year, accounting for about half of the roughly 18-million-to-25-million annually traded worldwide. If Finding Nemo is any indicator, we can surmise that the sequence of events surrounding the sequel, Finding Dory, which hits movie theaters today to rave reviews, will go something like this: hundreds of thousands of people will pack into cinemas around the country this weekend, then an inspired portion of them will promptly click around the web to see how they can get their hands on a blue tang, the popular tropical fish portrayed by the film’s title character.

Instal the new for ios Finding Dory