[Coral-List] [SPAM] Trade in coral skeletons, and the role of the consumer in reducing it
Charles Delbeek
delbeek at waquarium.org
Sun Feb 17 16:05:48 EST 2008
Andrew Baker wrote:
> Dear coral-listers
>
> Note that plenty of trade in (living) scleractinians goes on, legally,
> through the marine aquarium trade. These live corals are imported, under
> CITES permit, from the country of origin (usually Indonesia or the
> Philippines).
It has been illegal to export coral from the Philippines since the early
80s or perhaps earlier. Periodically dead coral skeletons have been
released from "storage" in the Philippines. These are claimed to be
corals that were already collected before the export ban. It was decided
to release these corals to clear out the inventory. This is not a
regular practice. There is no live coral coming out of the Philippines,
unless it is a black market trade. Areas that are now being exploited
include Vietnam, and this should be looked into as a possible area of
concern.
Ed Lovell did quite a bit of work with the trade of curio corals in Fiji
and found, to his surprise, that despite their collection, sites that
were visited less than a year later, showed signs of significant
regrowth. He might want to chime in on this thread.
By far the vast majority of coral is coming from Indonesia, followed to
lesser extents by Fiji, Tonga, Solomons, and the Marshalls. Again, most
of the branching corals such as Acropora are being sold as cuttings on
concrete plugs, other more massive genera such as Euphyllia are the most
commonly imported into the US and as I have already mentioned, these
corals are the ones that coral farmers and researchers should be
targeting for propagation work; we know very little about sexual and
asexual reproduction in these genera.
Aloha!
J. Charles Delbeek
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