From the sound of the letter it seems the agencies responsible for coral export oversight don't feel they can do their respective jobs properly at the moment and need a timeout to regroup, perhaps shake out some folks that are getting extracurricular income. Thing are pretty fast fast and loose in Indo and there have certainly been many, many coral's "legally" exported that were never on their CITIES list. Not to say they haven't added them now. But it's supposed to literally be only the exact species, in exact quantities, that can be exported. Since we can hardly ID things like meat corals and chalices I don't know how they were ever doing that in the first place on their end.
I'm sure Dr. Mac can give everyone the low down once he deals with what I assume is a pretty lousy Friday for him!
Plus, on a larger, scale, we can't keep hauling non maricultured coral out of the ocean forever. I don't think that will end now. Maybe not even in the next decade. But at some point the party is going to end. Given the Green's presence in Australia its a miracle they let us import any corals from them.
