Where do our coral come from?

[SAWFISH]

Dr. Mac has some good reading in his blogs.

The Adventures of Dr. Mac

Shop our online coral store for vibrant corals and marine life for your saltwater aquarium. As a top online saltwater fish and coral store, Pacific East Aquaculture offers quality fish, corals, and more for reef enthusiasts of all levels.

pacificeastaquaculture.com

I took a look at his article "industry under assault" he brought up a couple of interesting points. The first being genonomics of the corals in our aquarium and the need to occasionally introduce new variety's into the gene pool. I thought this was somewhat interesting because until very recently corals were not spawning in captivity so genes are not really being swapped. The second point he mentioned is that Indonesia has a trade association called Indonesian Coral Shell and Ornamental Fish Association (AKKII) for collectors of corals. I wonder if it might be possible to find some more information on the distribution of mariculture/aquaculture corals to live caught specimens.

Thanks for the link to the articles I enjoyed reading some of them!

 

[simonfchr]

I have a study job at a coral importer here in Europe and i we import for about 100000 euro wild caught corals each month so i assume that a lot of corals are still wild caught

 

[SAWFISH]

I have a study job at a coral importer here in Europe and i we import for about 100000 euro wild caught corals each month so i assume that a lot of corals are still wild caught

Thanks for the reply, if you don't mind could you provide any information about the company you work for (its name) and if you are aware of any other competing companies in Europe that also import similar numbers of corals?

Also, does anyone know how the size of the hobby compares b/w Europe in the US. I think I have seen before that North America has the largest population, but is Europe's population close?

 

[SAWFISH]

Well, I went on to CITES as recommended by PaulB. I managed to find this page which shows the trade data on Corals and you can look at various graphs and different perspectives on this data. One of the most useful graphs I attached below and it shows the source of the imported corals (wild caught, captive bred, ranched). It is pretty interesting. It would still appear that by and large corals are mostly wild harvested for this hobby.

If anyone has an idea or guesses what the different categories (Ranched, Captive-Born, Captive-Bred) are and how they relate to aquaculture and mariculture please chime in.

My guess is that captive bred would be the result of spawining. Captive born would then be the result of asexual reproductions like fragging. I am also guessing captive-born might include aquaculture/mariculture otherwise these corals are included in the wild section.

 

[SAWFISH]

Also big thanks to everyone who has filled out the poll! Keep the responses coming!

 

[Auquanut]

That graph is a real eye opener! I would have thought aquaculture would account for a much higher pecentage. One thing though. The source says (as reported by importers). I would assume that any domestic aquaculture facilities and hobbyist fragging in a given country is not included. I wonder how much that would skew the data.

 

[SAWFISH]

That graph is a real eye opener! I would have thought aquaculture would account for a much higher pecentage. One thing though. The source says (as reported by importers). I would assume that any domestic aquaculture facilities and hobbyist fragging in a given country is not included. I wonder how much that would skew the data.

Good point, there is a lot more data on CITES that I didn’t include. I will check to see if I can find some additional data later today! If anyone else is interested the link to the trade database is here

CITES Wildlife TradeView

Visualising CITES trade data over time, by taxa or by country

dashboards.cites.org

 

[SAWFISH]

In case anyone wondered the definitions of all of the sources in my above post are given as below. My guess would be that both mariculture and aquaculture would fall into captive born.

I also included the import sources for just the United States. It is interesting to me global reports in importing did not drop significantly in 2018 when some countries banned exporting corals. Meanwhile in the US 2018 is clearly marked by a clear drop in coral imports. I wonder why that is?

 

[xxkenny90xx]

Cyanide caught fish from National Geographic

The Horrific Way Fish Are Caught for Your Aquarium—With Cyanide

Up to 90 percent of tropical aquarium fish imported to the U.S. are caught using cyanide. A new petition is calling for the government to crack down.

www.nationalgeographic.com

A little cyanide never hurt anybody

 

[ChrisNH]

I will not buy a coral if I cant be sure it was aquacultured/maricultured. this unfortunately means some vendors I would like to use I cannot because their website doesn’t say.

 

[Brittanyjo]

Wild caught and maricultured are very different. This graph considers them the same. Maricultured corals are like farms. Maricultured corals support the economy and if done right, have little impact on the wild reefs. Any info on what percent of "wild caught" is maricultured?

 

[Karen00]

This was printed in 1997, I am sure it is changed now.

INTERNATIONAL CORAL TRADE: THE BIG EXPORTERS AND IMPORTERS Exporters: • In 1997, according to CITES data (of permitted exports), the major exporters of live coral were Indonesia (71%), Fiji (12%), and Solomon Islands (6%). The major exporters of live rock were Fiji (89% by weight) and Indonesia (74% by piece). • Major exporters of worked precious coral for curios and jewelry include Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan. Importers: • According to CITES, the United States is the largest importer of live coral and reef rock, bringing in more than 80% of the livecoral trade (more than 400,000 pieces a year) and more than half of the marine aquarium fish sold worldwide. • Other major importers of coral products are Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada.

HOW MUCH IS BEING HARVESTED FOR INTERNATIONAL TRADE? • According to the CITES database, in 1996, permitted coral exports produced 2.5 million pieces of live coral, 739 tons (670,000 kg) of raw coral, and 31,000 colonies of black coral. • About 3,000 tons (2,721,600 kg) of coral enter international trade each year for use in aquariums, according to the Ornamental Aquatic Trade Association. • CITES reported 19,262 tons (17,474,486 kg) of black corals were imported into 70 nations from 1982-1997. CURRENT POLICIES ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE OF CORAL There is strong international concern that some coral reef species are threatened or may become threatened through trade. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is the main instrument to monitor and regulate the international trade of wildlife.

Reef species listed under CITES include 2,000 species of hard corals, black coral, giant clams, queen conch, seahorses and sea turtles. Its mandate is to protect species from overexploitation from international trade. CITES protects corals with two levels of protection: • Appendix I includes species threatened with extinction. Trade in specimens of these species is permitted only in exceptional circumstances. • Appendix II includes species that may be impacted if trade is not controlled. Species in Appendix II are supposed to be regulated with permits for importers and exporters.

Wow and that is from 23 years ago! It would be very interesting to see updated numbers considering there are more places doing aquaculture (at least for some species). Having said that there are probably more people in the hobby now because it has gotten a little easier to keep reef tanks due to deeper knowledge and better technology as well as access to equipment and livestock via online. More people drives more trade so even with more local aquaculture maybe these numbers have gone up instead of down.

 

[blasterman]

Simply put, maricultured corals can't keep up with demand, especially LPS and there aren't enough volume fraggers out there. Most reef shops don't want to deal with trade in coral because they can make more money selling grapefruit size wild caught hammer corals for absurd prices vs haggle with small frags of captive raised montipora. Smart reefers start small and stick to captive raised, but a lot of beginners will go big at the start and buy show piece corals wild caught and just kill them.

Last time i checked the largest volume of wild corals traded were euphyllia.

All my corals are captive raised and traded from other tanks. They are cheaper and tougher than wild caught and make some guy money to pay his bills.

 

[GlassMunky]

Simply put, maricultured corals can't keep up with demand, especially LPS and there aren't enough volume fraggers out there. Most reef shops don't want to deal with trade in coral because they can make more money selling grapefruit size wild caught hammer corals for absurd prices vs haggle with small frags of captive raised montipora. Smart reefers start small and stick to captive raised, but a lot of beginners will go big at the start and buy show piece corals wild caught and just kill them.

Last time i checked the largest volume of wild corals traded were euphyllia.

All my corals are captive raised and traded from other tanks. They are cheaper and tougher than wild caught and make some guy money to pay his bills.

You really think they ship more euphyllia than acropora?
I don’t.
I’d say acros easily make up the bulk of imported corals.

 

[SAWFISH]

I will not buy a coral if I cant be sure it was aquacultured/maricultured. this unfortunately means some vendors I would like to use I cannot because their website doesn’t say.

What are some of the vendors that you know of that are for certain aquacultured/maricultured

 

[SAWFISH]

Wild caught and maricultured are very different. This graph considers them the same. Maricultured corals are like farms. Maricultured corals support the economy and if done right, have little impact on the wild reefs. Any info on what percent of "wild caught" is maricultured?

How do you know that the graph considers them the same? My understanding based on the graphs above and the description for each source was that mariculture would fall under captive born

 

[SAWFISH]

One other note when using the CITES data from the above link is to be certain you are looking at the Live Coral Sections. There is also data on "raw coral" which I think may include coral for other purposes such as decorations or jewelry but I am not certain!

 

[ChrisNH]

What are some of the vendors that you know of that are for certain aquacultured/maricultured

WWC has line that says it was aquacultured by WWC. Not sure of others. I plan to follow up with WWC to verify.

Tidal Gardens, who I would prefer as repayment for all their videos does not. I sent TD an email last night asking about that.

The unfortunate part is I know that a substantial number of the frags offered are from aquacultured corals, it just is not advertised as such.

 

[JaimeAdams]

They all came wild from the ocean at some point. At what point do you guys start calling it aquacultured? If I bring in an Acropora and then make frags, are those frags Aquacultured? What about in 6 months when I make the second round of frags off of the first frags? What about a year later? What if after a year I make frags off of the original piece are those frags less Aquacultured than the 3rd set of frags made off of frags? Just curiouse from the people who only want to buy Aquacultured coral.

Where I work I bring in wild coral or mericultured coral every few weeks, but we also aquaculture most of the stuff that we sell.

 

[ichthyogeek]

They all came wild from the ocean at some point. At what point do you guys start calling it aquacultured? If I bring in an Acropora and then make frags, are those frags Aquacultured? What about in 6 months when I make the second round of frags off of the first frags? What about a year later? What if after a year I make frags off of the original piece are those frags less Aquacultured than the 3rd set of frags made off of frags? Just curiouse from the people who only want to buy Aquacultured coral.

Where I work I bring in wild coral or mericultured coral every few weeks, but we also aquaculture most of the stuff that we sell.

Usually I define it as aquacultured if it was grown/spawned in captive settings (like in public aquariums). Maricultured if it's farmed in the ocean. Wild caught/harvested if somebody collected the coral.

Taking your examples, and assuming that you're not just cutting the coral up immediately after mailing it int, all of the frags mentioned would be what I consider aquacultured, since they were propagated/grown in a captive system.