How are our corals harvested?

[TJ Merrells]

I have a 55g shallow reef tank that I started up a few months ago.
My plan is to have all the fish in it captive bed... Nothing caught from the ocean, but that got me thinking, where do our corals come from? If I'm only doing captive bred fish then should I also be doing aquacultured or fragged corals only??

So my question is... When you're at your lfs looking at their newest shipment of corals do most of those come plucked from the ocean?
If so, are they sustainability sourced and heavily government regulated?

You see those pictures of giant frag racks out in the ocean, do they come from those or are they removed directly from the reef itself?

From info I've found in the past, shipping fish to your lfs, the typical mortality rate is 10-20%, is that the same for corals??


Any info on how we get our corals is greatly appreciated.

 

[ChaseB143]

I have a 55g shallow reef tank that I started up a few months ago.
My plan is to have all the fish in it captive bed... Nothing caught from the ocean, but that got me thinking, where do our corals come from? If I'm only doing captive bred fish then should I also be doing aquacultured or fragged corals only??

So my question is... When you're at your lfs looking at their newest shipment of corals do most of those come plucked from the ocean?
If so, are they sustainability sourced and heavily government regulated?

You see those pictures of giant frag racks out in the ocean, do they come from those or are they removed directly from the reef itself?

From info I've found in the past, shipping fish to your lfs, the typical mortality rate is 10-20%, is that the same for corals??


Any info on how we get our corals is greatly appreciated.

It really depends on where your lfs gets their stuff. I know mine gets a lot of mariculture pieces. Mortality rate,It’s going to depend on how well the place they get them from packs them. Usually if they are going to die though, they come in dead so that isn’t something you have to worry about as much.

 

[TJ Merrells]

It really depends on where your lfs gets their stuff. I know mine gets a lot of mariculture pieces, but there are also quite a few that aren’t. Mortality rate,It’s going to depend on how well the place they get them from packs them. Usually if they are going to die though, they come in dead so that isn’t something you have to worry about as much.

Well after doing some research any corals that are collected land under cites. And to bring any corals into Canada, there needs to be a cites permit from the exporting country and a cites permit to import.
From what I've read this insures that whatever is coming into Canada isn't a threatened species and is authorized for collection. The exporting countries cites permit ensures that it was harvested under controlled regulations and sustainably harvested

 

[Theulli]

I don’t *know* the answer to this, but I will say that a big money industry is at stake here and it involves places that may or may not have great regulation or enforcement at the front end of the supply chain. I think we can pretty well assume money, inadvertently or not, is making it into hands practicing non sustainable farming, just like with the wild caught fish.

I get aquacultured coral almost exclusively. I could see finding a supplier and using them if you know precisely what their supply chain is and that there isn’t something problematic happening five rungs down that they can maintain plausible deniability about.