Let's get a few things straight here since some of you seem to be misinformed.
WSI IS FIJI! There are no other coral exporters within the Fijian islands, the coral collectors work for Walt, each individual tribe owns their reefs and Walt works in agreement with those locals to collect from specific reefs. All of those tribes have benefited greatly from coral export as well. Things like running water in villages to education.
An outright ban will do nothing but hurt the local Fijian people.
While I was just in Fiji not too long ago a few things were very apparent, the reefs that were in trouble were the ones damaged by cyclones, most every damaged area I dove had one thing in common, hundreds upon hundreds of colonies that had been re-planted by WSI, not for harvest but for the purpose of rebuilding and restoring the damaged reefs. If there ever was a model for re-planting and focusing on the continual health of the reefs in the world they should all be modeled after WSI. I'm good with regulation but a complete ban will only hurt the reefs as well as the local economy.
A further push towards more mariculture would make more sense as well as ceasing the harvesting of wild rock, this has been an issue for quite some time it sounds like. As it reads now they are planning to issue a ZERO quota which in turn would mean ZERO export of Wild OR Mariculture corals. If that's the case we can kiss one of the most responsible operations goodbye. If they want to focus on mariculture then broodstock of some sort must be made available.
For now we will just have to wait and see what happens, hopefully this isn't the end of Fiji coral export as a whole. Cutting the head completely off of WSI will absolutely not benefit the people of Fiji, their reefs, the industry or this hobby.
WSI IS FIJI! There are no other coral exporters within the Fijian islands, the coral collectors work for Walt, each individual tribe owns their reefs and Walt works in agreement with those locals to collect from specific reefs. All of those tribes have benefited greatly from coral export as well. Things like running water in villages to education.
An outright ban will do nothing but hurt the local Fijian people.
While I was just in Fiji not too long ago a few things were very apparent, the reefs that were in trouble were the ones damaged by cyclones, most every damaged area I dove had one thing in common, hundreds upon hundreds of colonies that had been re-planted by WSI, not for harvest but for the purpose of rebuilding and restoring the damaged reefs. If there ever was a model for re-planting and focusing on the continual health of the reefs in the world they should all be modeled after WSI. I'm good with regulation but a complete ban will only hurt the reefs as well as the local economy.
A further push towards more mariculture would make more sense as well as ceasing the harvesting of wild rock, this has been an issue for quite some time it sounds like. As it reads now they are planning to issue a ZERO quota which in turn would mean ZERO export of Wild OR Mariculture corals. If that's the case we can kiss one of the most responsible operations goodbye. If they want to focus on mariculture then broodstock of some sort must be made available.
For now we will just have to wait and see what happens, hopefully this isn't the end of Fiji coral export as a whole. Cutting the head completely off of WSI will absolutely not benefit the people of Fiji, their reefs, the industry or this hobby.