Hey, guys, do you want to meet us in person? Come join us at the Minnesota Aquarium Society is Aquarium Expo 22 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We're going to be there March. Free admission, people. Come join. There's going to be great sessions. I think there's a fish swap. But above all else, you get to meet us in person. Not just hear our subtuous voice, but see our ugly faces. And thanks again to our sponsor, daku aquatics. Guys, if you haven't checked this guy's shit out yet, get to the website. daku Aquatics.com. He's got crazy deals on shrimp, different fish plants. You can use promo code aquarium guys to check out for a sweet discount. But if you even wanted a bigger discount on Boosa philandra, he's got sick imported rare Boosa philandra on hand. 20% off with promo code boost 20 at checkout. Try using mine as well. You never know a good bit. Make a mistake and you can double up. wink, wink. But check out the site, guys. Crazy good products. He even has shrimp lollipops, which I don't think that's intended for human consumption. But not going to lie, I want to try it. Thanks again, daku aquatics quarrym guys at checkout. The mad discounts. Let's kick the podcast. Welcome to the Aquarium Guide podcast. All right, guys, I brought you to this quicker podcast between other episodes because we have an emergency. So for set emergency, we don't even have Jim and Adam here. They're on vacation. I have a temporary replacement co host, dabby. You have been on what was it like episode 13? We went to West Virginia, you rescued a bunch of fish, and now you've come to live in Minnesota. So welcome.
Thank you so much. It's been a while.
It's been a hot minute. It really has a hot minute. But we have emergencies happening. So back to track here. We have Bob likeens from pjack here on the phone. Bob, thanks for coming back on, buddy.
Oh, hey, thanks for having me again. I had a great time last time.
Well, we we don't mean just to invite you when doom and gloom happens, but I mean, being a lobbyist, you have to keep us informed about important things in our pet trade.
Yeah, this is this is kind of the gig for me. I've accepted that.
Sure. Well, Bob, before we get going too far, I'm just going to get a little information about who you are in case this is the first podcast people are listening to with you in it, what you do and what the news of the day is. So first of all, pjack Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, tell us a little bit more about you and that.
Sure. I'm the vice president of government affairs for pjack. We are legislative and regulatory arm of the responsible pet trade. So we engage exclusively on laws that affect the pet trade and regulations that might be coming out of the government at the state or local level that would affect the pet trade. We also actually do get involved with cities, the Convention on International Trade and Endangered Species for international issues that affect the trade.
Wonderful. So again, being that guy that represents the pet industry, can you tell us a little bit about why we've gathered here today and what's threatening us as of late?
Sure. I'm sure everybody has heard that the competes Act, which is working its way through Congress, the way it came out of the House of Representatives, had a bunch of language in it that would have amended lacey. And when you talk about amending the lacey Act, you talk about having a lot of impact on the pet trade because it has a lot to do with importation of plants and animals.
So I'm not going to lie, I in preparedness for this conversation because we got to get the word out to people because it seems this already passed the House. I have a worders original here just to calm myself during this, and I think this is not going to quite cut it after hearing that.
I mean, dealing with issues where your hair is on fire is unfortunately a part of this world. But this is a case where the language moved through the House very quickly and the way it's written would really have a dramatic impact. Luckily, this is not language we've seen for the first time. So we have engaged the Senate in particular on some of this language in the past. So we've already started building some relationships, making some friends up on Capitol Hill to let them know just how damaging this could potentially be to the broad pet trade and particularly herps and aquatics.
So part of this here, Bob, is as I'm kind of going around and I'm trying to catch myself up on this a little bit because it's been roughly a week, me and Robbie have been sitting here talking about some of this.
Well, that end, I mean, listeners, this is the first time they heard about it as well.
Yeah. So as we come into this, is this something I know, as we looked, it was kind of maybe more leaning towards a party line type deal. And what does that outlook look like when you're talking about making friends on Capitol Hill?
Hopefully it's not red or blue. I mean, that's the last thing we knew with the pet issue.
Yeah, I know, but when you're getting into this, this seems to be something that was the amendment that came through, I can't remember how many, but there was a bunch of amendments that were added on to this competes Act. Am I correct in that?
You are. And they were hundreds of them were voted in together in what they call Nbloc. They just lumped them all together, said, we're going to vote on the amendments. Yes, and you're right, in this case it was very much a party line vote. I think one Republican voted for it and one Democrat voted against it in the House. Otherwise, it was straight party line. But that's not really surprising in this case because the bill is not about the lacey Act. The bill is about being more competitive with China. They just shoved some lacey Act language into that bill. So the party line vote doesn't really surprise us because this wasn't a vote about the pet trade. This was a vote about a bill that had a lot of the speaker of the House, representative pelosi's pet projects in it. So it's not surprising that this came down to a party line vote on the House side. We expect it to be different in the Senate. The issue right now is, now that that bill has come out of the House and been sent to the Senate, the Senate needs to decide what to do with it. And there are a couple of things they could do. They could say, okay, we're going to take up the House bill, house Resolution 45 21, and we're going to debate that and vote on it. The other thing they could do is they could say, we're not going to do anything. But that's unlikely. But the last thing that they could do is they could say, look, we we passed a bill like this last year. In June of last year, they passed Senate Bill 1260, the Us. Innovation and competition. Act. So what they could say is they can go back to the House and say, look, we've already passed a version of this. Now you've passed a version of this. We're going to set up a conference committee, and the House and the Senate will both assign some members to that committee, and we're going to negotiate out the differences. That is very likely what will happen. And jumping ahead of myself, the reason we have not put out a new call to contact your senator, contact your representative, is because the Senate hasn't made a decision on what they're going to do yet. As soon as they do, we will be sure to let everybody know very quickly what we need them to do in order to defend the trade.
This seems to me as if this is going to go to a committee type approach, like you mentioned there, in the end of everything. And if that was to go to a committee type approach, you're reaching out and things of this nature at this point. What does that look like for you on yours in moving forward in this interim, while we're waiting to find out.
What the Senate does well on our end, what it looks like for us while we're waiting to find out is we're getting ready for any eventuality. We're doing all the writing we have to do to be prepared no matter what they decide, because once they do decide, there's not going to be a lot of time to do anything. Once they take it up, they'll do it quickly.
Getting back to basis for people that are just jumping into this, the amendments, the lacey amendments that they're suggesting, what does that look like in the real world? If that were to pass, what's the repercussions that we're seeing, the enforcements of those amendments?
Sure. Well, there are a few that really would have a big impact. The first one is, as things stand right now, species essentially get blacklisted from coming into the Us. If they're considered injurious or invasive. And the department of fish and wildlife has a list of species that can't come into the Us. This bill would change it to a whitelist. And what that means is nothing can come into the Us. Unless it's on their list. So they would have to build a list of every species that's allowed in, and they'd have to train inspectors on how to identify those species. I mean, can you even imagine that with doing it with corals? Because you can't look at a coral and determine what it is. You realistically have to do DNA testing to do it. So the whitelist idea is a huge non starter for the trade. As you guys know, with aquariums, the fish that are popular, particularly with marine tank keepers, change over time. We've been dealing for years with a whitelist in Maine, and they wrote that whitelist in the mid seventy s, and we haven't been able to get them to add anything to it since. And aquarium keeping has changed a little bit since the 70s.
Okay, Minnesota, try to propose something like this as well. We have so many natural waterways in the dnr, we're seeing all these other states waterways affected by invasive species. Minnesota has been fighting it for different carp species, crayfish species, invasive snails, and they just wanted to really find a way to combat invasive species. So they proposed a whitelist format. The whitelist format was brought up, and aquarists and many other parties involved showed them because they wanted to make a whitelist, because they figured that would be the easiest method, showed them over 33,000 species of fish that exists. And then Minnesota looked and thought, this is going to take way too much resources and money, and went back to a blacklist.
Yeah, that was, it was a huge deal up there. One of our members and a member of our aquatic committee, rick Cruz, was very involved in that. And Minnesota actually passed the law and had a whitelist.
Yes.
And we had one of our members send them a list of 25,000 fish and said, these are what are in the trade, and they backpedaled. And the sponsor of the original bill actually helped us to get the law changed from a whitelist to a blacklist. So the stores and the hobbyists in Minnesota had a huge impact in getting that. But can you imagine if that had stood? And can you imagine if now just to get into the United States, it had to be on that list.
Oh, absolutely. And it makes sense that there are species harmful to bring in. So, I mean, we're not just petitioning here talking to the podcast of how this is doom and gloom and they should let us every fish species in. There's a reason why we have snake head in Florida. There's a reason that there's Asian carp that jump out of the water hitting people in the Mississippi coming up of the streams. And they're are species that in my opinion absolutely should not be brought in for the trade, just for their invasive roots. And it's debatable. I mean, you have Asian marijuana where even a low end specimen costs $2,000 in a trade and that's a couple of years salary in the Asian areas where it's native and they destroy the areas where they're collected. So some of them, even if you disagree with them, makes sense to ban, but taking it backwards and banning everything and only letting some in, what's the criterias that they want for that whitelist? I heard that there's studies that are required. What are the amendments saying that we have to have to allow a species on the whitelist?
Well, this is a challenge that you always face with federal legislation is lawmakers like to have the ideas and leave the details to the administrative offices. So basically they would say we want a whitelist. You have to study the species before they can go onto the whitelist Department of Interior. You figure out how to do that. So how it's done would vary greatly depending on which party happened to control the White House when those regulations and those rules are being written. So it's tough to say because so.
They'Re opposing a whitelist and not telling us how to get on the whitelist. I get that that's how a lot of these measurements fall. But that seems entirely unfair that this bill would be prepared without amendment to be passed on. It just hurts my brain.
Yes, I'm definitely with you.
So in a real world, right, what is the probability of, let's say, pretend this horribly passes with the lacy amendments and we come in and say, OK, now we have to pick a whitelist. We show them the 33,000 over 33,000 species of fish or we just show the 27,000 that are in the aquarium trade. Will that overwhelm them and make them backpedal the bill? Or because this is a federal bill and it's not done at a local level, it's not as lucky as Minnesota was that we're just stuck with it now.
Yeah, I think it's far more likely that the agency, the Us. Fish and Wildlife Service, would study each of those species and they'd start with the ones that are most common in their trade and work their way down based on the volume that are traded. The government agencies are not likely to go back to the federal government and say, you made a mistake when you made this law, they are going to do their best to interpret it and enforce it and implement it. The big challenge is one of the other things this bill does is vastly expands the authority of the Us. Fish and Wildlife Service. So you've got a species, whether it's invasive or not, you've got a species that's not on the whitelist, okay? So it can't be imported into the Us. But what this also does is gives Us. Fish and Wildlife Service authority over interstate commerce, which is something they've never had and the courts have told them they don't have. So now if you've got a species that is not on the whitelist, it can't even be aquaculture and traded domestically in the Us. It can't cross state lines.
So this is such a nightmare. I'm immediately like red flagging a couple of details. One, imagine some of these fish species, right, that are actually extinct in the wild, that is commonly traded in the pet hobby. Those are such at risk because there is no ecological habitat that exists right now. Maybe they're trying to reinstate it. Maybe they've just forgotten and it's just held in the pet trade. We hear about the, you know, the cares species all the time. They're in such a risk that are only supported by the pet trade. And you know, that some random cichlid species that doesn't exist in the wild, that's only in a cares act, that a handful of individuals across the United States trade to breed, to resupplement the supply, are immediately going to be so affected that we might lose actual species in the trade.
Sure, you're right. There are a lot of species that are considered extinct. They're extinct in the wild. They were in a lake in Africa, and they threw a bunch of nile perch in there instead, and it ate everything. So they don't exist in the wild anymore. And this would decimate that the hobbyists have kept those species in existence.
And then you think about some of the deals where you've seen cases in the past where you've had banned species. We just had a podcast just released recently here talking about piranha. And the gentleman Frank magians in the 90s had problems where they would blanket ban a generic fish name, and then they would pull just calling it a piranha, and they would pull anything that the Fish and Wildlife guru felt like qualified as a piranha, which had nothing to do with the piranha species. He had a bunch of his fish taken away. He worked to get the piranha unbanned in Oregon and I think Washington, if I remember correctly. You have to listen to the podcast. I think it's podcast 88. And the Fish and Wildlife, because they had such vague language, they just had the right to go out and surpass the law and grab something else. And we know that this bill is so blanketed, it's going to give them so much ability to overstate amendments, the slacy amendments. It just scares the shit out of me.
Yeah, and it's not always an overreach either. I mean, when you look at the number of species that are in the trade, there is a huge education factor here with inspectors and enforcement officers. Even if they're not trying to overreach, you can't tell me that they could walk in and look at 20 species of coral and tell you which one was the one that was on an endangered list.
Well, I mean, think about how long it took for even like, let's take something else that's federally illegal, right? Like marijuana. Right. It took years for different states and different organizations that would have something that they would deem as a marijuana product. They would just lock someone up because they have the right to do it and call something marijuana when it doesn't even have any marijuana product in it. Now, some of the states have combated this for wrongful arrests where they are actually having to test and prove its marijuana to convict the gentleman. Right. So imagine this in the fish trade, right? They have to figure out a species that very few people know. There's going to be no way of testing the DNA of that species to see if it's banned. And they're just going to have people walking in blanket pulling coral whenever they feel like it, for that example, for instance.
I think it's entirely possible.
It scares me, man.
So when we get back to the interstate portion with that and to kind of piggyback on what you were saying there, robs, before I moved up here to Minnesota, I lived on a tristate area to where we had three different states hidden right there together. We had three large cities all together. So what kind of impact are we talking about when we're talking about having a fish store who's trying to keep their selves running? And you've got three different states, you've got three different jurisdictions, you have people currently with different ideas of what's on this list, what's not on this list, and are we expecting someone who's working at a pet store getting their fish? Are we expecting them at this point to be able to know 37,000 different fish and what's on this list, what's not? As we go through everything, I just don't understand how the interstate portion of this works on a federal level.
That's a valid point. I mean, what are they going to have for people to staff this, figure this out? It's it's like what they did in the 90s when they tried to ban websites and different content online. Technically, it was illegal, but no one was enforcing it because they had no staff, no dollars going in that direction.
I don't think you're going to see as much of the risk of this at the store level. I think you will always have that enthusiastic inspector. That someplace that's going to go in and cause trouble at the store level. I think where the real problem lies is this will add so much risk to the transporters and the wholesalers that they won't be able to do it. It's the transporter that's taking those fish across state lines. If they're essentially going to be charged with smuggling or illegal animal transport every time they cross a state line, that's going to be a huge risk to them. And what are the chances that the driver of that truck knows all those species?
But wouldn't a direct hit towards those chan chippers and towards that, wouldn't that be just a direct hit to the fish stores whenever they come through at the fish stores? I totally understand, but the majority of people who are probably listening to this podcast at some point are looking at how does this impact me? Not how does this impact the transhipper? So as I'm kind of thinking of this as we go through, I mean, you've got your transhippers as it keeps coming down through the pipeline. How does this impact the listener to this podcast? Why should they be concerned about this? Not so much the direct hit there. I know we understand that to that.
Certain level, but we have a whitelist banning the species. The species can't be imported. We'd be left in this I hate to use the word, but we're on doom and gloom tonight, post apocalyptic fish markets where they only have Florida breeders and you can't transport across these state lines anyway.
But even with Florida breeders, if it's on this list, then at the end of the day we're not going to be able to get that fish anyways. Correct.
It's a white list. If it's on the list, we might. If it isn't on the list, like everything else, then we're going to see even common species disappear.
So what are we looking at? Whenever you're looking at what is already in the Us. Versus where are we going to be at? If it's on this whitelist, what does it look like for breeders in the Us. Now, currently?
So it's got to be even worse than cites. forgive me, Bob, this is a fascinating our brains are clearly exploding. Can you tell? It's even worse than the sightse list. And I think some of the cites list is definitely necessary. Don get me wrong, I'm not going to just say the sighty's list is horrible, but let's pretend like zebra placo, right? Zebra placo were banned because they're only coming out of one river. They don't breed that fast. They're extremely expensive fish. And because of the price, the ecological system could have been decimated given they were still allowed to be imported. So the United States and the citizens banned the importation of zebra placos. But the ones we had on hand in the United States could still be bred, still be traded. The price skyrocketed and it was harder to find zbripleco. But eventually we had a stabilized market of people spending $250 per zebra placo, and we had our own little supply in the United States left over. This is even worse because it's giving that, like Bob said, that state to state border can't cross state lines. So now we have even worse hope of a species like that being affected. You can't transport them. I have a friend, he's been on the podcast, he has a zoo. He legally has lemurs, right, ringtail lemurs, like you see on madagascar, and he can't transport them across state lines. And there's only a handful of people in Minnesota that have these. So eventually they're going to be inbred because again, they swap between each other. There's only so many species left. They're inbreeding lemurs because they can't get new bloodlines because it's state border fish are going to be affected the same way.
That's kind of where I was going with that and what I was thinking, because sitting right there on that tristate area, I've got most of my pet stores. I've got one in that area, and then I had four other pet stores that were in two different states. So being able to pull from that whole gene pool and what that looked like now as a breeder, I'm sitting in the tristate area and where I've been going for X amount of time, being able to supply these other pet stores, to be able to supply these other areas. Now I can't drive 15 minutes to go drop off guppies. At this point, whatever the case may.
Be, Bob, I'm hyperventilating, I'm out of work. There's originals. Help me, Bob.
I've been where you are. I've been dealing with this a little longer. And here's my biggest worry with all of this, is the Us Fish and Wildlife Service. When it comes to the tools they have in order to deal with a potentially invasive species, they've really only got one, and it's a hammer. They don't have a lot of nuance that they can employ. They can ban things or they can allow them. That's really it. So if you've got a species that is highly invasive in Florida, it would not be able to be on the waitlist right now. If you live in Florida, lionfish are a very big concern. If you live in Minnesota, lionfish are not a big concern. Not a lot of salt water bodies that are warm enough for a lionfish in Minnesota.
So let's make an argument, Bob, right? Let's make an argument that we, we could do common sense banning, right? Let's, let's pick one that I agree with, right? I'm a big fan of the dojo loach. We giggle, we call it a penis fish in the podcast. It's a really hardy species. New tank lovers like their cold water species. We're in Minnesota, right? And it gets 40 below here. It should kill species. But the dojo loach thrives in these type of climates where they have frozen lakes and streams. And we've seen places in lakes in Michigan where that particular species gets released by accident and then takes over a lake and stream. So immediately Minnesota added it to the ban list because they've seen what it does, they use common sense and seen that the species thrives in that area and they made a logical decision to ban it. However, you may love the dojo loach. I have literally one dojo loach left with a receipt before they banned it, after which I can't purchase anymore. Right. Because it's a risk to the ecological system. However, on the counterargument, there's ones that they never expected in Minnesota we have a red swamp crayfish. Red swamp crayfish are a tropical species that unacciidentally got released in one of our lakes and they adapted to the Minnesota winter climate. Never expected, never seen before. It's hard to predict some species, but you know for a fact that other species do not survive in Minnesota. So it's much less of a risk. So it's not an exact science. It should keep evolving. But that doesn't mean that we should just ban everything and then work backwards to see what we can release. It's such a harmful effect.
I would go a step beyond that. I would say that you're right. In order to be a responsible pet trade, you have to acknowledge when something presents an undue risk of being invasive and you have to make sure it doesn't come in. But the environment, the climate varies so much across our country. This is something that's done very well by the state. And that's my concern, is that too many of the people who've spent too long in federal government think all solutions are federal. I'm not going to go on some tirade about states rights or anything, but this is a case where the states are different enough that it makes sense to have the states decide what is and what is not allowed within.
It just makes sense. Things in Texas will work in Minnesota. Some things in Minnesota won't work in Texas. It's a different climate, different status. There's reasons why my area shouldn't cover this and another area can. I mean, that's logical.
And you also have to accept that no matter what you do and what system you put in place, there will be mistakes that happen. I mean, I grew up in Madison in Wisconsin, and I remember that Wisconsin tried to control the algae in the lakes by putting carp in the lakes because they thought that the winters would kill the carp off.
Right?
Not so much algae, but the carp was still there. So a good risk assessment does have to be done, and we're a big supporter of that. But the United States is too diverse to have a one size fits all solution.
It's always the seems that every rule, everything McDonald's has to put caution coffee's. Hot on it because someone tried to sue over a coffee cup. It's the few that ruin it for the rest of us, right? I hear rumors about this. lacey amendments were added from the people because it all came from hatred of what happened on the documentary Tiger King. Is there truth to that?
That I don't know. I do know that us. Fish and Wildlife would love to see this because they tried to assert control over interstate commerce and the court shot them down, and that has been a sore spot for them. And I know that it is a priority of at least one person on speaker, Pelosi staff. Those are the only things I know for sure on this. Although Senate Bill six two six, which was the first time we saw language like this, was actually offered up by Senator rubio from Florida.
Okay. Seeing it from rubio, I don't care left or right. This issue that they're adding the lacey amendments has nothing to do with your political policies. I want to put that first and foremost, you're doing they're pet owners on both sides and independent sides of the coin. We all have had pets. But seeing a senator from Florida come up with an invasive species topic isn't surprising to me. You know what I mean? Being that's the capital of invasive species.
Well, in Florida, I mean, let's face it, florida has an environment that is conducive to an awful lot of species being invasive. And because of that, at the state level, they have very tough laws on it. But Florida also has an awful lot of aquaculture facilities. And this doesn't just affect aquarium fish. This would affect food fish. This would affect the herb community, the reptiles. The impacts are just really, really broad on this.
Debbie, can you imagine not getting our smoked salmon that we get in motley and, like, shipped next day?
Blasphemy. No blasphemy. Yeah, you can't buy smoked salmon.
I'm worried about your example. Salmon is the one exception that was made in the original lacey.
Oh, thank God.
There was a disease in the salmon that was being imported back in the 70s when it was written. So the salmonids are the one exception in lacey.
Okay, maybe my mahi. mahi. All right. That I can't get.
I'm really not that hungry, so I don't want both mahimahi. I just want the one mahi.
They'll cut it in half for you.
I just want the mahi, not the mahimahi.
All right, well, I'm going to take a minute. We had straggler just walk in. Alex from the Secret History living in your aquarium. The YouTube channel just stopped in. Alex, welcome. So while he gets ready, I have questions from the audience. Now we're doing this podcast live on discord. We will post scheduled nights. We used to do this every other Monday. Now we do podcasts intermediate as needed. That's why we're doing this. Emergency call to Bob. Thank you but we have people asking some questions. Bob, for you. So first question. What does this bill impact? Does it impact plants as well?
The Lacy act. Yes, it would. Obviously, as the Pet industry, I don't get involved as much on the plant side, although we do a little bit of work with regard to fish tank plants and fish pond plants, but we do very little on that side. But yes, it would. This would affect plants and animals.
Okay. That adds thousands and thousands of different species. So when you say plants and animals, all animals like lions, tigers, bears, cats, dogs, lizards, rabbits, everything?
Yes.
Okay, quick question then. You said that there are some amendments that already happened in lacey Verbiage, right? Talking about, like, salmon was a kosher. What about cats and dogs? Those are the most common pets across the United States. How in the world is that getting affected? Is that amendment already verbalized that cats and dogs are okay, thanks to petco?
Well, petco has never sold cats or dogs.
Well, no, because they always sell the food. That's their whole market.
You know what I mean? And you will see the language in here. It is not supposed to be impacting things that are already commonly in the trade, and definitions are everything. But no matter how you define it, cats and dogs would not fall into it. Although you could argue that cats in particular are the us's first invasive species.
Well, think about it. If we're requiring ecological surveys, I mean, imagine you let your cat out. They've done studies on this showing how cats can decimate small critter population and bird population within, what, a couple of miles of their living address? It's a crazy thought. Like, what constitutes this? Because it's just such a vague verbiage.
I will say I am very glad that we do not get involved in the Trap neuter release programs. We do not take a position on that, and I'm really glad we don't, because I've been in state level hearings about it, and the pro cat people and the pro bird people can't stand each other, and it gets to be a very vicious fight.
Man, I didn't even think of that. Bob, hopefully you're more in the aquatic sector for things just for the people. Yeah, I can hear you, alex, welcome.
Okay, thank you so much. Yeah, the thing that I'm listening in and thanks for having me, but I was listening, and obviously the minimum quantities defined and whitelist versus blacklist and all those definitions that are so vague is what worries me. But I just want to kind of impress one thought on everybody, which is when you make laws, you don't just make them for the team you're on, you make them for the next team up to bat, too. And so even if you think that this law is great and it regulates things and it makes it so, that, okay, we need to regulate most species. Maybe I only want 100 species. You could get an administration that guts this Secretary of the Interior or swaps it out with some person who's extremely pro pet and all of a sudden legalizes all dojo loaches everywhere or whatever. So it's just so vague that it doesn't even outline either side of things. And for the future to come, laws just need to be understood well and not just like the guest said, a hammer to hit every nail. It's just not the best tool. You need a screwdriver, a hammer, pliers everything, preferably a scalpel.
You know what I mean? Let's only hit things that are necessary. Next question. Unless you got a point for that one, Bob.
No, I'm good.
All right, next question. Is it true that as a federal bill, anything injurious in one state would prevent it being added to the whitelist, aka. everything's invasive in Hawaii, and that would spread across the rest of the country?
That is my concern. The language is not that well spelled out. And it would come down, I think, to the Us fish and Wildlife Service and Department of Interior interpreting it. And my understanding of the limits that the Fish and Wildlife Service has with regard to those tools we were talking about is that, yes, if it's invasive someplace, it can't make the whitelist, and that's a huge problem. And that's why states already have their own blacklists, and that's why Hawaii has such stringent requirements on importing any animal.
Well, it also outlines that it includes Puerto rico specifically, so I would assume guam and the solomon Islands also, which if you include that, that's every species of fish from that climate to Alaska, every fish in the world could survive somewhere in the Us. So that would be really just out of their minds, in my opinion.
This is so doom and gloom. It's like I'm in a terrible movie script where they're just trying to ban out everything and just control each piece.
So if we go from control here and we're talking about the different things they're trying to control and everything, why is this even a piece of this that got added in as an amendment? What is the benefit to this? Because I feel like you need to understand every piece of that to be able to combat the negative portion of.
It with the angle. Right. There has to be a reason this was proposed.
Yeah.
What is their thought process of adding the lacey amendments? What's the benefit of doing this? Is it just because they are you.
Asking why it ended up in this.
Bill, why it's ended up at all? What are they saying? It's a benefit because we're talking about every negative. We have to pretend that there's got to be some sort of positive they're looking at here.
And this has ended up I mean, this language has came over multiple things. This isn't just the first time we've seen language like this is just because.
They'Re looking for control, or is there some verbiage in there that could be seen by some viewer as positive?
Money. It's always money.
I mean, if you look at it realistically, it would probably have a positive effect with regard to the introduction of invasive species into the Us. The question is the juice worth the squeeze? Are you willing to kill off this many industries and this big of a hobby in order to potentially improve the invasive situation by an unknown small amount?
Right.
There are people that would really love to see fish and Wildlife Service have more power anyway, just to play dabbles.
Allocate here kind of how we're looking at this. And you were talking about the invasive species and how negative and everything.
Sure. They have to figure out how to control invasive species somehow. Why not blanket blanket hammer?
Yeah, I understand the blanket hammer. And you were talking about whenever it comes down to how much of an impact that it would have just playing devil's advocate at this point, wouldn't that open up for a whole new level of well, while that may kill the aquarium trade, is it really going to kill the aquarium trade when we're looking at breeders and what we could do? Because as someone in business, I'm sitting here thinking, okay, now how can I profit off of this if this were to come through?
So you're trying to throw out a conspiracy theory here to Bob. You're saying that somebody is helping indict this because it benefits them financially somehow.
Imagine that. Yeah.
Holy cow. Imagine that is in a position to set up a breeding facility in every state, though, because this would ban the interstate transport of all those species as well. So you couldn't move it state to state, so you would have to set up breeding facilities for all those species of fish in every state.
Okay, so my point on this, if you're looking at every state, as far as every state I've ever been in, when you look at dnr offices and fisheries and hatcheries and things of that nature, I mean, what kind of monetary gain are we looking at there, or what? Might that be the case?
So what you're proposing, because I'm trying to make this plain language here, right? Yeah. If you're suggesting in your conspiracy theory, sir, that the Fish and Wildlife firms want to make more income, so they're the only fisheries that are legal to transport across state lines, is that what you're saying?
Oh, I mean, I'm just saying that.
Might be the case.
Go ahead, Bob. Sorry.
They wouldn't be able to transport either. They would have to set up a breeding facility in every state for every species that state wants.
Okay, let's play that card for a minute, right? If we're going conspiracy theory, let's have a little fun. This has been too much doom and gloom, Bob. This is not bob's theory. This is not represented by PJACK. I got to put that out there. We're just having a little fun, trying to lighten the mood. So if a police officer pulls the person over, they have some sort of illicit substance, the police officer technically in possession and crosses state lines with evidence. The Fish and Wildlife have to follow their own law so they can't bring it across the border either. Seems a little crazy just for verbalizing out loud, not that I don't believe it.
So you get pulled over and now at this point, instead of saying, do you have any drugs or weapons in your car? Do you have any drugs, weapons, or pets of any kind?
Pets of interest?
Yeah. Do you have any pets of interest?
Excuse me, sir. We'd like to take that monkey away from you.
That's just my three year old in the back. I'm sorry.
All right, what you got, Alex?
I have another thought, and it comes from looking up. I found some history from not this year, but past years where rubio has also worked with lobbyist groups, including kaiser Group, who I've seen Central Pet work with, which would be some of the big box pet stores in like chewy online petsmart, which there is the theory I'm not saying is true or anything, but some people are saying that there is an incentive for big box stores to whitelist 100 or 200 key bread and butter species and get those cleared. And then after that, they don't want the oddballs. They don't want all the other species that make local fish stores really the amazing places that they are. And that would also encourage Florida fisheries if they whitelist the things that are there. So I'm just trying to follow the money of the biggest players in the pet industry.
I think the only thing that puts the hanker in it is that even if someone did, which we're not saying we did, we're not going to shit on Central. This is not a stance, any of this is a stance of pg.
No, I'm just looking at money.
That whole state line thing ruins it. Like, they can't send it from Florida to Texas. They can't go from Texas to Minnesota.
Well, if it's whitelisted, they can. Right, right.
The simplest answer to that is most of the larger companies you're talking about have invested quite a bit in fighting this. And full disclosure, most of those are also members of mine.
Sure.
Some of them have done a lot financially to support this when they don't even carry marine fish.
Sure. Yeah, I've seen that.
No matter what angle you go down, it's crazy that this amendment exists. I mean, it doesn't matter what political spectrum on you could have voted for harambe. And if you're a pet guy and you want to have access to different stock, grow your hobby, this is just a nightmare.
I also think that people should take away from this situation if you start writing your senator and obviously if it's a Democrat mostly backed bill, the 3000 pages that are unrelated to the Pet stuff, I mean, they want either votes or money or praise or what does a representative want? It's something of that nature. And so if you write them and just start calling them names and comparing them to regimes from Nazi Germany or whatever, they're going to shut down and not listen to you and assume you're not voting for them. So no matter where you are on the spectrum, it behooves you to contact representatives on both sides with an issue by issue pointed approach and basically telling them why it matters to you. But it doesn't really solve anything to go to our corners and wedge issues in between all of these important aspects of this. We need everybody to participate and get involved.
Didn't agree more. This is not a left versus right, red versus blue issue pets very seldomar. This is as I said early on, the vote on this came down to party line because this is a big bill that has some lacy language buried in it, right?
There's other things on it.
So you're absolutely right. Lawmakers care about your opinion at their constituents far more than they care about my opinion as a guy from DC telling him what ought to be done.
Right.
So your voice is very important, but you have to come across as somebody worth talking to. And the good news is, when the Senate decides what it's going to do, we're going to write that language for you. We will send out an alert to all our members and it will have a link on it where you click through about three links. We will already have written the letter to your senator and all you've got to do is add any comments you want and hit send. So we will make sure it's phrased in the proper way and addresses the issues and is not inflammatory.
So Bob, as far as the call to action, we have very motivated listeners. Even the listeners in the chat are losing their minds. They're even saying Canadian citizenship is looking real good right now. Sure, it's joking, but it does affect the people at their favorite hobby. That's why they listened to this podcast. That's why they're here now. But they're motivated. They want to do a plan of action. And you talked about a proper time on when to have our listeners message their senator. What's the website? It's right on pjx website. What's the instructions for the call to action for people that are motivated and want to amend this amendment?
Yeah, well, it's not an amendment now. Now it's part of a bill. It is part of the House bill. The call to action will go out as soon as the Senate declares what it's going to do. And the reason that's different is if the Senate says they're going to take up House Bill 45 21, then we need to contact the entire Senate and tell them exactly what the problems are. If they say we're going to conference and we're going to try and work out the differences between our bill and their bill, then we need to contact the conference, probably on both the House and Senate side, and let them know what our problems are with the bill. And then if that doesn't work, then we reach out to the full Senate. Because if we reach out too soon, they're not going to read it. They have a lot of things competing for their attention and they're not going to look at it until they know it's an issue for them. So until it goes to conference, they're not going to care. But once it does, we've got to be fast.
Well, let's simplify this call to action, because, Bob, you work this every day. This is your core responsibility of keeping up with this, notifying the public representing PJACK, trying to get these representatives for our pet trade. But most people listen to this. They got day jobs, kids, children. It's going to be hard for them to keep up besides some Google News feed that may or may not get fed to them. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to put your PJACK website link in the podcast Show Notes. Please visit them. They will have instructions on how to contact your Senator. But they'll notify you on your website, I'm assuming, of the appropriate time, right, Bob?
Yes, it will be posted on the website. The other thing I would do that could be really important for this is I would go to your fish stores, the place where you get your fish, your fish supplies, and I would ask them if they're members, because when this happens, we will send out a blast to everyone on our membership list, telling them, do this right now, and if your store is a member, they can get that to you. So I would strongly encourage you to encourage your stores and any store owners that are listening here, encourage your suppliers and your shippers to be PJACK members so they get the word at time.
Wonderful. I'll have the link for that in the Show Notes as well, so you can help support PJACK directly. Become a member, have your store become a member, and then follow that link that we have in the Show Notes. Check it. Send yourself a reminder. Check it once a day. These things act fast. And we definitely need your articulate response. That shouldn't have to do with anything about red and blue. It has to do with our hobby. Scary stuff, Bob. Scary stuff.
It is a quick plug for a couple of other events that are coming up because with this issue, I am now going to be in Orlando for aqua shella and I'm going to be at Global Pet expo and actually at the World Aquaculture Association meeting at the end of this month. So if any of your listeners are at those shows and want to bend my ear or want to ask me other questions, I will be available at all of them.
Wonderful. So I'm going to finish up questions here so we can go through the list. There were some notes, actually, Alex even put some additional notes and people got more questions about minimum quantities imported in the last year. There's some verbiage there. Have you studied that line in the amendment?
Any, here is the really discouraging part. That means whatever the Us. Fish and Wildlife Service decides it.
I feel like this whole amendment thing is nothing's defined. It's kind of shot at the hip and now we're all shitting our pants.
I hope those weathers aren't sugar free.
They are sugar free.
No, I've got to leave this room.
That's the worst.
I've got to leave this room.
Okay, for those that don't know, right. debbie's mentioning the idea of sugar free. Have you heard of or heard of the sugar free gummy bears? Apparently only a couple will work like a laxative. Well, sugar free worth cause cartoon flatulence. So I'm on a time scheduled immediately after the podcast. I'm going to I hope this is.
After the podcast, after the fight.
All right, cool.
Nice long family drive.
Long family drive. There you go.
Bob, I kind of wanted to talk to you a little bit. If we go back into can, kind of follow the trail and we were.
Getting back more conspiracy.
No, not conspiracy theories. I'm genuinely curious about how this became a thing to start with. You said there was a couple of people you mentioned Rupio things as we went through there. What are we looking at as far as how did this lacey language ever become part of this? Because the American Competes bill at this point is a massive bill. Where did this come into this bill at?
Well, we know why. We just want to know who and when.
This is a favorite maneuver in DC. This is how you get potentially contentious issues through in legislative language. You make it a small part of a big bill that is very important to get passed. And the House has far less rules than the Senate does with regard to how much the things that are added in have to do with the base use of the bill. So if the bill has a central focus of competitive trade, the Senate interprets that fairly strictly. The house does not. So regardless of which party is in there okay, there is someone we know. The speaker's office has had an interest in this type of language in the past. They tried to put it into the budget bill last year, and we managed to get it removed there. But with regard to who offered this specific amendment, there's just no way to tell this started as a 30 page bill and the first committee it went to did a full replacement. They cut out all the language in the original bill and replaced it with 2000 pages of this and there's no way to tell who each specific section came from.
Okay, so when we look at this and we're looking forward through the Senate and everything as we go through this, how important are those party line candidates? I'm from West Virginia so Joe manchin, somebody who votes both directions, I know he's a Democrat, but he usually is on that line. How important is it going to be to look at the direction they're going with some of this bill to find out what we can do moving forward?
It doesn't tend to have as much to do with party as where you are in the Us in an issue like this. Senator rubio is a good example. He's a pretty conservative Republican. But this is a vast expansion of a government agency and Republicans typically are not in favor of that, only the.
House that affected the party lines. Now that it's in a different stage, now we don't know.
Right. And our hope is, and our conversations to this point lead us to believe that the votes are tight enough on the Senate side that they're not going to want to wander too far from what they've already passed. That they're not going to want a lot of extraneous things in there that might cost them a couple of votes because they don't have them to spare. So we think we can influence this on the Senate side. We've been talking to the Senate about this for a year and a half now, ever since Senate Bill Six two six was offered last March. So I don't think the sky is falling, but I think the sky could fall very quickly. If we aren't effective in letting senators know what our concerns are, we have a good chance of being influential, but we have to make sure enough people reach out that they realize it's a problem for sure.
Well, go ahead, Alex.
Bob, do you think that they will vote on this, try to get this going before the midterms because it is kind of a Democrat back bill and as it stands things are a little more favorable to this competes act getting through regardless of this pet project or pork that they've added. Do you think that will happen before the midterms then? Probably.
Yes, I do. I think that the Biden administration is going to want to see this. They're going to be putting a lot of pressure on Capitol Hill to do it.
Well, going through the other questions we have, it's a longer question here, but it breaks down to why haven't we seen some of the bigger box stores talk more about this? I know we've seen a lot of the people in our trade, specifically like Seagris farms. We've seen people make stances, talk to your senator, put publications out of how this could affect the hobby. But some of the box stores have not really taken a stance. Is that just because they're corporate, they don't want to take a stance on things? Or is there something we're not seeing part of it.
But I think the bigger reason is they do take a stand on it. They just do it quietly. They do it by being my members and members of my board. Good. And their membership dues and their contributions are what? Fund by staff to fight this fight.
Good deal.
Now, I was curious, is there any need of fundraising? I mean, obviously, probably as a lobbyist group, you always need more funds, and you can always do more with more money. But I'm seeing the amount that some of these companies are putting up, up to 100 grand, or it's impressive. It's not a small amount. They do care. Like, people are asking, why isn't somebody doing something? Well, they are behind the scenes if you look in the right places. So I'm just curious, though, can the average person contribute to this cause? Is that useful? Or should they print local flyers?
People at home, a lot of people.
Are kind of like, well, what can I do?
There are a couple of things you can do. The first is when you see our alert, share it with everyone you know and get them to respond. The other is go to my website, and right up in the upper right hand corner, I think it is, there's a button that says donate, and you can donate either to the legislative defense fund or to the PJACK aquatic fund, which spends money purely on aquatic issues. Right now, most of our spending is going to a legal fight and getting the hawaii fishery reopened for aquarium fish and tried to develop a test to detect the use of cyanide in wild fish collection. Those are the big projects we're working on right now.
That's a huge, by the way.
It is. And what's really frustrating is you would think the food fish people would care a lot more, but the people who eat the food fish in the places that are using cyanide don't care. So it's up to the aquarium trade to clean it up. So we're trying to and we have spent a lot of money trying to develop a detection method, and from there develop a test for the use of cyanide.
I know in the freshwater trade, rope fish are one of the most affected. It's very hard to find any rope fish outside of small breeders or communities that have not been affected by cyanide capture, even in their farming methods. It's so sad.
Well, and there's also an environmental level of cyanide from mining and other things, certain areas as well. So that can be difficult, probably, I would guess, too.
Yes, you're right. Cyanide exposure from runoff from mining. Runoff is a huge thing. But what we found with the last round of scientific testing that we spent about $40,000 on was that fish tend to process cyanide into the cyo thionate very quickly. So it's system that long, so you should be able to if they're given enough to be captured, you should be able to detect it, but probably only for 20 to four to 48 hours. So we are we are continuing to slog down that path and see if we can't get closer to a good way to do it.
So I had another question that I think might impress upon people also what we're facing here with the possibilities if this passed. So I happen to have worked with some of these impact studies and things like that, but I'd like to just hear from your take, because I'm sure you're much more familiar with this. Across the country, for each species that would need to be approved, there's a little bit of a notation in this bill that says up to 150,000,000 could be allotted annually for ten years, which people might say, oh, it's a lot of money. But when you think about 32,000 species of fish, I mean, how much can it cost to even just barely assess if a fish is going to be detrimental to the entire ecosystem variety that exists across the Us. I mean, how much is an environmental study assessment in all 50 states going to cost for each species? Have you seen what the price is on those?
The short answer is no. I have not tried to go down the road of pricing out what doing risk assessments would cost. It could vary widely depending on which method of risk assessment you use. That fight for the last ten years is government agencies fighting over what is an acceptable risk assessment and how comprehensive it has to be. I could spend $150,000,000 studying one fish.
If you gave me the opportunity to salmon, for instance. Yeah.
So it could vary widely. And you're right, in the grand scheme of things, that is not a lot of money.
Well, this bill amendment, the lyse Amendment, clearly isn't verb specifically, so it's not going to change with this one. magically. Just makes you more nervous. Justin, you had another question?
Yeah, Bob, we've got we've got listeners all over the world, not just the Us.
What kind of impact? Australia.
I said we were number eight in Canada.
That was just yesterday.
Yeah. So one of my big questions here is, what kind of impact are we going to see on a global scale with the language that we're looking at here in the Competes Act?
Yeah.
How could other countries be affected by this if it doesn't get changed?
Well, there are countries whose major export is aquarium fish. You get small third world communities. I don't know. Are you guys familiar with Project piaba? Yes, I'm a huge fan of their work. And can you imagine if they couldn't bring those fish in, you'd basically be saying the fish are worth nothing. Go ahead and clearcut all this rainforest because the only thing worth anything here is the timber.
So for those that haven't heard about Project piaba, it's a wonderful program. You can check it out. It allows people in those South American countries that are impoverished area to humanely correctly capture fish that don't kill the rainforests, that are probably just going to be part of floodplains and die anyway, and make a solid income while importing really valuable species in forest for the aquarium trade. It's a wonderful program that would crumble 100% crumble.
Their catchphrase is buy a fish, save a tree, because they provide income in areas where the only other income is clear cutting the rainforest.
Alex, you had a question?
Well, I was just going to say that because of things like Project piaba or Anthony Mazarol's Research Center down there in Aquitos, we know that up to over 80,000 people in, in Brazil alone and another 30,000 people in peru use this as their primary income source, or at least their village. That's how their food stand or their boat company that services the people who go out. That many people at a minimum are impacted there. But there's fish in Africa, there's fish in South Southeast Asia. So beyond just the farms and the big companies, I mean, there's a lot of people that if they don't do that, yes, they could be clear cutting, they could be illegal mining, there's illegal mercury trade that's going on for that mining and all that stuff becomes some of the only other work that's available for them. And so a lot of people think that wild caught fish is depleting this thing. But they need to understand that there's an all tropical fish. The water rises. It's not a four season system, it's a two season system. And the water rises and then it falls. And when it falls, oftentimes there's puddles filled with densities of fish that simply die and dry out. That's why they have 400 or 1000 eggs every time they spawn. And so these people are utilizing that resource and it is actually sustainable, they've found. So people really should look into each species. There are species that that's not true for, but for the most part, most of our little tetras and the popular species are a pretty sustainable thing in the freshwater trade in many cases.
You mentioned Singapore, Alex. I like that one. When they look at import lists with Jimmy, singapore is the, I don't know, a third of all of the lists. It's by far the largest list. I can only imagine the people in Singapore how that's going to be like the hardest hit.
I actually got to go to Singapore and see the fish farms and see the facilities that did the wholesaling and trans shipping and the fish farms are fantastic. And I saw some ponds filled with arijuana. But I think part of the reason the numbers are so big in Singapore is that they have such good veterinary inspection there that they know that the fish coming out of Singapore can get into the Us. Because their veterinary inspections are very rigorous. So I think they bring in fish from all over the region that then come out of Singapore to the Us.
Makes sense.
Well, yeah, we start to see places like Singapore that it's a city state, it's not a large place, it doesn't have a ton of resources. And fish are a relatively high value resource when you breathe the right ones in a small area. So they focus on quality. But generally the list goes Singapore and then Japan or Hong Kong, macau, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Czech Republic. Those are kind of the big fish exporters and middlemen in the business. But a lot of times you can follow it. And that can be, like you're saying, the secondary market. So the first market could be catching them in the wild, and that supports one group of people. Well, then there's a middleman to the wholesalers, and then there's the wholesalers and the trans shippers and the local pet stores. So it's not just one person out collecting fish, losing a job. There could be 5710 people losing income, jobs and their livelihood because of some legislation like this.
Well, to finish up the questions, I think one last one here, they asked Bob, how do you sleep at night? Do we all have to pitch in for a massage, relaxation weekend after all this is over?
This is what I do. It's strange, but I am a non confrontational person by nature, which is an amazing thing to say for somebody who spent 25 years in the army and is now a lobbyist. But it strikes a personal chord with me because I've been a hobbyist for most of my life. I think I started in third grade with my first fish tank that I got, and I got my fish at pier One Imports, which I doubt even sells fish anymore.
They do not.
But it was always a challenge to keep tanks when I was moving as much as I did in the army. But I have literally had all my fish in essentially tupperware bins and driven from California to Georgia with my fish in in the back of my truck so that I could keep my fish tanks going. And so I have a personal interest in protecting the hobby as well as a livelihood in protecting the hobby. And I am the one who staffs our aquatics committee. So I'm very involved with the issue. I believe in the issue, and I'm just trying to fight the good fight. Any resources you can get us, whether it is your name on a letter or a couple of bucks to the aquatic Fund or to the Legislative Defense Fund, or if you're a store out there or a business out there. For God's sake, join. I mean, we're the cheapest stay in business insurance you'll ever find any help is appreciated. But we're out there fighting for what we think is right.
Well, for those that are listening, you have two options on the table here. We've been talking about doom and gloom. You have two options. One, you could immediately take this podcast, go out, buy yourself a bunch of breeding stock and prepare for the worst. Or you can use this call to action, take this information, share with a friend, give the instructions off the pja website and contact your senator when the time is right. Keep watching the website. The links are in the description. Consider donating, having your store become a member. You can become a member yourself, Bob. You're doing the lord's work. We appreciate you. debbie, we need a positive spin here. Yeah.
So this has been all negative and I hate the doom and gloom of everything, but we're looking at all these negative things with the competes act. Bob, what have we got on, you know, the radar for positive? What are some of the laws, some of the things that we need to be looking for to be able to support moving forward?
Give us one story at least, Bob, of something that pjack recently did that has made just the biggest benefit.
Give us something good, Bob. Give us something good.
Rainbow and sunshine, please.
Yeah, here's the first rainbow and sunshine. It's not something that's happened yet, but the rainbow and sunshine here is. Yes, there is a lot of doom and gloom attached into some language that at first glance doesn't look like that big a deal. But the bottom line is this is a very winnable fight. We can win this. We just need people to reach out. We just need the resources to do it there. This is not, oh my God, it's going to happen, let's prepare for it. We should not have that hard a time beating this. If we get the trade, and in this case, particularly the hobby involved, because the hobby is a lot of people, I mean, there are a lot of fish tanks out there. So if tank owners, if hobbyists, if clubs get involved in this, we've got no problem winning this fight. We just need the help to do it. So that is my biggest ray of sunshine. The other thing I would say is, I guess with regard to big wins we've gotten so far. There is an act called Preventing Future pandemics Act and we have worked with Senators booker and cornyn for about two years now on continually tweaking the language on that and getting it to a place where when it was first written, it was written in such broad terms. The way I read it, it probably would have outlawed most of the Us seafood industry, but we got it dialed back to where it ought to be. We got it changed to the point where it only affected animals. Being brought in for human consumption had no impact on the trade. And parts of that bill are now finding their way into other language. Parts of it found its way into the budget. So we have been successful in doing these engagements when we got folks helping us out, and it took a lot of folks helping us out with that one, too. We do an annual Hill Day where we have our members join us and we go up to Capitol Hill and we meet with congressmen and meet with senators. Obviously, we've done that virtually the last couple of years, but it's been effective. That's been one of the bills we've talked about and we've been successful with it. So we can, as a trade and as a hobby, have an impact if we get together and do it. The problem is it's too hard to get together to do things well.
Bob, I appreciate the motivation. The sunshine and rainbows we need. That Alex from Alex. That meme you just posted. It looks like some sort of a political senator. He's holding a giant aquarium net above his hand at a podium and it says, from my cold, dead hands. So we need to spread this meme around. Put a link make this image clickable, put a link to the Call to Action on Pjack's website and spread this with your community. Bring it to your fish store. And when the moment is right and we see that on the pjack website, tell everybody that has a fish. We have to get this cemented.
I can't see it.
I'll send it to you, Bob. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take that image, I'm going to photoshop your face on it, Bob. And that's going to be the podcast cover art. You got to send me a profile pic. We'll get this done.
Making me famous.
Oh, it is charlton heston. Yes, it is. That's a classic. Well, Bob, again, thanks for coming on the podcast. Alex, thanks for stopping by. Again, links in the description for how to act, how to help out pjack moving forward with stuff like this even in the future. And check out the secret history living in Your aquarium on YouTube. Link will be in the description for that one as well. And thanks for filling in gaps.
Thanks so much for having me.
I appreciate it. Bob, any other notes for us?
Hey, thanks for having me on. Having a lot of fun this time. Had a lot of fun the last time. I am always available to join you anytime you feel I can be of use.
You should come on next time when you have some major success you want to brag about instead of just doing gloom.
No more doom and gloom, Bob. No more doom and gloom.
We'll have a patreon hang out if this gets amended.
People only care about what I have to say when it's about to put them out of business, though.
We'll have fun. Otherwise we'll show the better hot tub version of Bob. You know what I mean?
Hey, you want a winner? How about the fact that the last time I was on, I was talking about Moss Falls and we basically wrote the rules for the federal government and they were going to write their own rules and we wrote a comprehensive enough set of guidance and put it out to industry that federal government decided they didn't have to do anything. Our language was adopted by Europe. Our language was adapted by Canada. So it was all because I was on your show talking about moss balls.
Hey, that's what I say. We did it here first. We got to put hashtag Bob brought.
Balls back up there somewhere.
Yeah, we got to put it out there. hashtag Bob brought the balls back. That is great news. I didn't know the follow up on that. I've still collected a bunch of moss balls in my state. They finally now let them be brought back in Minnesota. So bob. Bob, that's amazing. Thank you. And next time, hopefully it won't be soon.
You guys get all the credit.
We get the credit. Yeah, just here first. We brought the balls back.
Hey, thanks so much for having me on.
Thanks, Bob. For those that are listening, share this with a friend. We'll have next podcaster coming out. They'll be with Jim and Adam will be back. They're on vacation. And keep giving us some form. Until next time. Thanks guys, for listening to the podcast. Please go to your favorite place where podcasts are are found, whether it be spotify, itunes, stitcher, wherever they can be found, like subscribe. And make sure you get push notifications directly to your phone so you don't miss great content like this. I thought that's how aquarium guys got circumcised. Bob brought the balls back.