Confiscated coral

[Djplus1]

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/green/blog/bs-md-coral-donation-20130923,0,3539036.story?track=rss

 

I wonder if this was going to any suppliers we deal with.

[Coral Hind]

It sounds like they were dried skeletons, probably for ornamental use to be sold in the many beach stores or tourist traps in Florida. It's nice that they are going to an education program. Thanks for sharing!

[Der ABT]

About half the confiscated coral was identified as Seriatopora hystrix, or "Birdsnest coral," while the rest was identified as Pocillopora damicornis.

 

CMON birdsnest is endangered?? if thats true all acro's are in danger man...

i wish they woulda found someone to keep the stuff alive, seems like a huge waste to let it die, im sure a LFS or someone woulda been happy to make up some water to keep things living.

[smallreef]

I think it was where they were taken from, a protected sanctuary area of the Solomon Islands...

[zygote2k]

Sounds like a political shell game and the possibility that they were alive and then were allowed to die.

[FrankieGee]

"The corals were confiscated in March and donated in June"

 

If they were alive when confiscated, I hope they were taking care of them prior to being donated.  I didn't realize Birdsnest was endangered and illegal.  If they are, why are we able to purchase them online?

[Mattiejay6]

The ones online might be aqua cultured?

 

Or

 

Someone might have a permit to harvest a certain amount

[Origami]

"The corals were confiscated in March and donated in June"

 

If they were alive when confiscated, I hope they were taking care of them prior to being donated.  I didn't realize Birdsnest was endangered and illegal.  If they are, why are we able to purchase them online?

I can't say this for sure, but it may be that the real problem is that they came from a protected reef and that this may violate the Endangered Species Act, not that this species is on the Endangered Species List (yet). (But that's just a guess.)

[Origami]

I asked one of our members who works in this area at US Fish and Wildlife to weigh in. Hopefully we'll learn more about this.

 

Sent from my phone

 

 

[FrankieGee]

Thx Tom.

[davelin315]

I'll weigh in since this came through me.  

 

Homeland security contacted me in February in regards to a shipment of seized corals.  We frantically worked to get an aquarium in Florida to take them and then found out that they were not live but coral skeletons after a few weeks of back and forth with different agencies and aquariums.  These sat around for a long long time without any takers (they almost came to WAMAS) until I convinced our education department to take them in Baltimore.  The reporter makes a lot of assumptions on what they were and what they are used for, but in reality the majority (4 of the 5 boxes) were P. damicornis and the rest were an assortment of different corals (Acropora, Seriatopora, Stylophora, Heliopora, Scleractinia, Tubipora).  They were seized when they came in from the Solomon Islands.

[Origami]

So, Dave. Why exactly were they seized?

[AlanM]

Now I know what happened to my sweet shipment of Solomon Islands dry rock.

 

It's actually good to hear that they were dry skeletons, not live corals.  Unless they were live when harvested and then set out to dry somewhere, which would be upsetting.

[wade]

Almost all corals (I think all hard corals?) are protected by CITES.  If you don't have permits, it is illegal to move them into/out of the country.