Is there a reason why fish market observations can be marked Casual? I have a few from Seattle and I’m pretty sure they were just caught off shore.
Zebra in the Serengeti = Wild
Same zebra in a zoo = Captive, because “humans intended it to be then and there”
Same zebra escapes, and is wandering around the street outside the zoo = Wild
Does this make sense, William? 
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Interesting topic. Never really thought about fresh fish in a market. But it makes sense to mark as casual since they are probably many miles from where they were caught.
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Yes, but I felt stuff in a fish market was a gray area since those organisms were wild. Shouldn’t they be available for potential research grade status if the location and date are reasonably accurate?
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I guess they could if the boat captain tells you when they were caught and gives you GPS coordinates (good luck 
) of the area caught. Put that in the comment section and it should no longer be casual.
I think the time is not as critical, but it’s a big body of water out there - much harder to guess.
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I know this topic gets rehashed over and over, so apologies, but is this really a great example?
If the zebra escapes the Bronx zoo and is seen later that day traipsing around Pelham, surely it’s still in the area because people wanted it there. If it survives there on it’s own for any appreciable amount of time and/or starts mating with more AWOL zebras or some local species, that’s obviously different. Like the Monk Parakeets in Queens, for example.
To put it another way, if my 3 pugs somehow dig under the fence in my backyard and escape until I discover the jailbreak and bring them home 45 minutes later, if my neighbor snapped a photo could he submit a legit observation for a roving herd of temporarily-wild pugs out terrorizing the neighborhood?
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I’ve posted verifiable fish catches, but those were from local fisherman who were just offshore.
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Speaking of gray areas . . . no clear answer in that thread!
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it is best not to upload records like that: it doesn’t really represent an encounter with nature by yourself. Not to mention the information plate does not provide actual coordinates, just a fairly general location.
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yeah I’d be inclined to agree with this take.
@carnegiecoop in any case, I’d still post them. Fish markets are always a pretty cool showing of local fish species and often you’ll find lesser known species caught as bycatch, some of which are pretty seldom seen.
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There is a West African fish project. Actively recording the info from the fishermen.
For you, walking past the fish market, they can only be Not Wild, with the place and time where you saw the (dead) fish. Obs can be useful for providing clear pictures - but not for the living and wild location.
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Site staff have made it clear on multiple occasions that escaped captive animals count as wild.
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Fish that flops off the table at the fishmarket = wild 
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you may want to look at some previous threads on the topic of observations from fish markets, such as:
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Yes, to sum up the previous threads linked above:
Observations are the observer’s encounter with nature. If someone encounters the fish at a fish market, where it is captive, the observation should be marked as captive. Users shouldn’t make observations for other people’s experiences, though if it is done rarely, it isn’t a huge problem. Users shouldn’t make lots of observations of fish from fish markets posting them as wild at some indeterminate location off shore as they didn’t experience them there and can’t verify the details of the observations.
As others have noted, the example of the lobster above definitely shouldn’t be posted as a wild observation.
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Even something like a genetically engineered dog? Pugs don’t occur in the wild by default, so their existence is literally because humans wished it so. Now if someone owned an African cat that is not a domestic species, then I could understand if it got out, it’s wild at that point, though this is a gray area as some of these cats come from breeders, but they are still much closer to wild than a Doberman would be. I think it’s too convoluted to be black and white, but I think a distinction between an escaped domestic animal and an escaped captive animal is important.
I encourage everyone in this thread to read @pisum’s two links above, as they provide many valuable perspectives.
My take is that the answer to this issue (of posting observations from fish markets) is it depends.
It depends on two things:
- It depends on the fish market, and
- It depends on the diligence of the observer
If it is a large, international-type fish market, then it’s not that different from photographing an animal at a zoo. It’s hard to say where that thing came from.
But what if you’re friends with the zookeepers? What if you were there when that animal was captured? That’s where small fish markets come in.
Let’s say it was a small, local fish market in a developing country. The fishermen never go more than a few km offshore. The catch is brought in fresh each day.
At this point, location is pretty accurate. It’s maybe limited to one bay, where that species is endemic. And the date is accurate. This valuable data can tick a lot of the boxes that @loarie talks about each month:
- Species discoveries
- Range extensions
- Tracking invasive species
- Helping with conservation
- Monitoring the success of restoration projects
- Etc.
Now it depends on the diligence of the observer. You will have to write a comment that explains the situation. Explain that you talked to the fishermen, you checked satellite photos, etc., and you confirmed that they never venture farther than 5 km from the fish market.
You lived in the town for a week, and you confirmed that the catches come in fresh each day. They have no way of storing fish. Etc.
You have to write a comment that is detailed enough that someone could read it in 10 years, and they would still agree with your “wild” observation. And you have to write that for every observation that you submit, so that it stands on its own, even if no one has ever seen any of your other observations.
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Not to get too off topic, but we have a Patagonian mara that’s been seen wandering a park in Colorado. They’re not really sure how it ended up there but I guess it’s a good example. Patagonian Mara (Dolichotis patagonum) in June 2024 by Joel Day · iNaturalist
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