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Dang. You rely on vendors to do the right thing... and when they don't, you find another vendor.

 

On the other hand, some good things are coming of this with the sentencing it sounds like.

Very interesting, did anybody pick up on where the imported stuff was going?? Not to hard to figure it out.

john

Richard Greenfield was also placed on three years probation, and ordered to pay a criminal fine in the amount of $25,000. Additionally, the defendants were held jointly liable for storage and transportation costs exceeding $10,000 which related to the March 2006 seizure and approximately 40,000 pounds of coral rock found and seized by the government at the company

Richard Greenfield was also placed on three years probation, and ordered to pay a criminal fine in the amount of $25,000. Additionally, the defendants were held jointly liable for storage and transportation costs exceeding $10,000 which related to the March 2006 seizure and approximately 40,000 pounds of coral rock found and seized by the government at the company

Yep, but what is in the Harbor Branch Institution......A little marine Trivia..

 

Cough ORA cough cough.....

 

They don't make it easy to figure that one out. I had to surmise from my personal knowledge of your recent travels, and a google search of two different entities to find out that they reside at the same address... OR I could have found it if I didn't go chasing my hunch by digging through the site to find their subsidiaries.

 

Very interesting... I wonder if you can get some Hatian rock for me? Although I'm guessing that by the time they got it, the rock was pretty much base rock.

Cough ORA cough cough.....

 

They don't make it easy to figure that one out. I had to surmise from my personal knowledge of your recent travels, and a google search of two different entities to find out that they reside at the same address... OR I could have found it if I didn't go chasing my hunch by digging through the site to find their subsidiaries.

 

Very interesting... I wonder if you can get some Hatian rock for me?

Ding ding ding!!! We have a winner!! Hey why not, come on down and pick up your 3 polyp RPE on me!!

 

oohhh, did Johnny just groundbreak another fun WAMAS interaction forum with prizes???

Ding ding ding!!! We have a winner!! Hey why not, come on down and pick up your 3 polyp RPE on me!!

 

oohhh, did Johnny just groundbreak another fun WAMAS interaction forum with prizes???

 

Cool.. and the prizes could be a neat way to provide incentive for members to research conservation issues!

Based on my reading of a few reports, it appears the only illegality was a lack of paperwork, aka procedural.

 

Not trying to diminish the infraction, just bring up the point: It appears the import of the rock itself was not illegal; the lack of paper trail was illegal.

Guest Larry-T

Cough ORA cough cough.....

 

They don't make it easy to figure that one out. I had to surmise from my personal knowledge of your recent travels, and a google search of two different entities to find out that they reside at the same address... OR I could have found it if I didn't go chasing my hunch by digging through the site to find their subsidiaries.

 

Actually both divisions of ORA are listed on the HBOI website as divisions of HBOI. The link is http://www.hboi.edu/aqua/park.html

  • 1 month later...

The rock involved was almost certainly "Reef Bones", a dead, coral skeleton rock not colonised like live rock but collected from a marine environment. I have some of this rock in the store which is clearly a large Montastrea skeleton. When this product first appeared on the market it was coral rock like the stuff mined in Florida, not clearly identifiable as a coral skeleton. As time went on, however, it became more recognizable as dead coral. I suspect that carelessness in collection became the real problem and eventually they got busted. Smelling Reef Bones, it's definitely got some biological goo in it, but I can't imagine that it was live coral sacrificed for the rock. It would have been pretty ripe by the time it got to me.

 

This is actually of some concern from a conservation standpoint. Many people recommend using as much "base rock" as possible both to avoid the cost of filling a tank with live rock and to minimize impact on the natural resource. Reef Bones, while I'm completely ignorant as to its collection impact, made great base rock. Not anymore.

 

The reason I speculate that Reef Bones was the product at issue is that it very suddenly disappeared from availability from wholesalers despite being a very popular product. In addition, the wholesale cost calculated from the stated value in the press release lines up pretty well.

 

CaribSea, of course, makes a great line of reef products and I hope they'll be more careful in the future about collecting.

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