Cichlid hobbyists and researchers often wonder whether taking fish from the wild has negative impacts on wild populations. There is surprisingly little information about the impact of collecting fishes on wild fish populations. My own observations from over a half dozen field trips to the tropics in which I spent a lot of time underwater observing cichlids are that collecting cichlids with hand nets is unlikely to have any effect on native populations. Cichlids are fast swimmers and adept at hiding. Cichlids also produce large numbers of young, the bulk of which seldom survive more than a few weeks. From this I conclude that collecting young cichlids (for the aquarium hobby) is not a "bad thing" and in fact is probably a good use of the habitat in which the cichlids are found. Such collecting encourages conservation of the habitat. Collecting of adults, particularly breeding adults, is much more serious and should not be encouraged unless populations are very healthy. Fishing for adult cichlids (e.g. fishing for wolf cichlids, Parachromis dovii) is an important tourist activity in parts of Central America. This sport can only be condoned in areas where cichlids are doing very well (as they appear to be in some places). Cichlids are caught as food fish in much of their range. Trawling in the Great Lakes of East Africa is far more effective and potentially detrimental to cichlids than catching them one at a time with fishing line. However, recent studies show that some of these cichlid populations are healthy and can sustain large harvests. One particularly destructive method of acquiring cichlids is "grenade fishing". In essence, a live grenade is thrown into the water. It explodes and stuns and kills all fishes within a certain distance. Some of these fish float to the surface where they are collected. Fish that are not killed outright may be damaged, e.g. the swim bladder may be ruptured, destroying the fish's ability to adjust its buoyancy. Such fish are often seen on the bottom of the lake and are called "belly crawlers". This kind of damage cannot be repaired and such fish will likely never mate nor reproduce. Other fish are killed by the blast but do not float to the surface right away making it impossible to collect them. The result is massive destruction of vast quantities of aquatic life for a relatively small catch. The bottom line is that while grenade or dynamite fishing is an easy way to collect some dead cichlids (typically to eat) it causes massive environmental damage and should be banished everywhere.