If it is a red Gigantea, arrives alive and healthy, and looks good after settling in, I do have someone that will have first right of refusal. However, now that the divers at the specific island know what to look for and having already found a couple, I believe I can acquire more.
Why are these anemones so expensive?
It's a remote island where they exist and getting these anemones to my facility requires a lot of planning and expense.
As we all know, Gigantea are notorious for being one of, if not the, most difficult anemone to ship. These anemones are shipped in a box to themselves, one to a box! With freight and misc fees, it amounts to many hundreds of dollars per anemone. If there is a loss, that cost then must be added to those alive, healthy, and saleable.
I have visited the location and have known the divers and exporter for many years. The diver at the remote island finds Gigantea and other anemones. After years of setting this up, the diver now sends me photos. I select the anemones I want and those are sent off to the international exporter who has arranged all the necessary permits and paperwork. Then a freight forwarder must get freght space from an airline. In this particular instance, this shipment has taken many weeks to get a freight confirmation. The routing is from Jakarta to Dubai and then on to Washington DC. The total transit time approaches about 36 hours. Upon arrival it takes several hours for the freight to be available at the airline freight warehouse. Then, the US Fish & Wildlife Service and US Customs do inspections, at our cost. All the paperwork is double and triple checked and everything must be exactly correct. We hire a broker that acts as our agent that has the direct contact with the government officials. Beside the broker's fees, paying for the inspections, paying for freight space at $7.20/kg, paying the airline a fee for the final handling of the boxes, we also have a 19% tariff at the moment. In total, the fees far exceed the cost of the animals. All this takes another few hours before we are able to collect the boxes and then it's off to the drive back to our facility. This shipment includes cultured clams and corals, anemones, inverts, and captive-bred and wild collected fish. So, a plan is needed as to which boxes are unpacked first and then in which order. This shipment has 35 boxes and it takes several hours to unpack and acclimate everything.
Every item is priced to us individually, plus we pay for the boxes, a packing fee, and a lot of other misc fees. Many of which are required by the exporting country. All in all it's exhausting and frought with risk. But since I'm passionate about this, it is what I do. Usually these shipments require being up all night and as an old man I find it more difficult as time goes on. However, despite it sounding like I'm whining, I am not! It's what I do and have done for the last 26 years. One shipment after another. Each takes weeks to plan, sometimes months. And I'm still a hobbyist at heart, despite seeing just about every possible creature over the years I still am in awe and excited about opening every box and seeing all the amazing animals.
