South Florida man charged with illegally harvesting coral

[CiXeL]

(CBS4) VIRGINIA KEY The South Florida man arrested and charged with illegally harvesting coral has bonded out of jail.

Alaine Salermo was arrested Thursday after Florida Fish and Wildlife officials found 300 pounds of live coral on his small boat near Crandon Marina on Virginia Key. His boat was also confiscated.

http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_018170845.html


willing to bet he was planning to sell it to the local fish stores. you see tons of ricordia, gorgonians, obviously native zoos, etc by the tons at fish stores. i talked with one guy who claims he saw an aquarium store owner poaching stuff right out of the water at john pennekamp coral reef state park. sickening.

its nice they actually enforced the poaching laws for once.
of course it may have to do with the fact miami seaquarium is right around the corner from there that he got busted. talk about flaunting your ability to poach.

 

[blackcloudmedia]

http://myfwc.com/marine/recreational/co ... stions.htm

According to this your pretty much not allowed to harvest anything in FLorida.

 

[blackcloudmedia]

http://myfwc.com/marine/recreational/recharvestmls.htm

The rules are so finnicky, you can collect corralline algae, but not live rock. I would like to see this done lol.

 

[Unarce]

They could be referring to some of branching and plating form of coralline :wink:

 

[Anonymous]

I'm going to hate going to Maui next year because I'll see so much stuff I'm not allowed to take home

 

[Anonymous]

I'm going to hate going to Maui next year because I'll see so much stuff I'm not allowed to take home

The coral diversity there is pretty low. A whole lotta Pocillopora, and not much else.

 

[CiXeL]

theres some encrusting montis there. a blue one you see all over the rocks and a brown one. funny, hawaii has the montis and south florida has the acros but neither have the other.

of course tubastrea is everywhere. it was introduced into the caribbean via ships travelling through the panama canal with colonies encrusting their bow's. its now all over the caribbean and showing up in reefs in texas. fortunately its both non-invasive and attractive.

tarpon fish swim through the panama canal from the atlantic into the pacific (and who knows what theyre doing over there). supposedly they see them in the locks when they move ships through. they said in the beginning they saw alot of dead fish in the locks but over time they adapted and started surviving the whole trip through.

The diadema urchin plague that wiped out most of the sea urchins in the caribbean and is causing the algae to smother the reefs was likely introduced through the panama canal because the plague started right at the mouth of it on the atlantic side. i imagine they caught it from urchins on the pacific side of the canal.

 

[Ben1]

I dove Pennekamp with my sister last year , nice shallow dives. The aquarium they had there was nice. We were down to dive Ginnie springs and decided we needed to dive the reefs. I am doing the trip again this summer....

In any case seems to be no reason to harvest stuff down there anyway, its not the pacific and not nearly as dense in coral as the dives I do regularly in the BVI. It is a shame this is going on at all.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm going to hate going to Maui next year because I'll see so much stuff I'm not allowed to take home

The coral diversity there is pretty low. A whole lotta Pocillopora, and not much else.

No <yawn> porites?

 

[CiXeL]

actually there is porites there and also here in florida but you wouldnt want to collect it even if it were legal because it requires such perfect water conditions, its extremely slow growing and requires tons of light.
im still betting that pocillopora damicornis is going to get in through the panama canal on a ship at some point. thats an invincible little critter and has the ability to start seeding on an object and then bail-out later as its growing if conditions suddenly change. it would occur like this.

1. ship in an area of pocillopora spawning
2. baby coral begins to encrust on hull
3. ship passes through panama canal and stresses baby coral
4. coral begins the bail-out process and starts to decalcify
5. ship exits panama canal and coral goes free to encrust somewhere outside the mouth of the canal. (this would be the place to look for evidence of this)

the question is how freshwater-tolerant is pocillopora. in order for it to happen it would have to occur during a period of less freshwater conditions to fill up the canal so more saltwater from each side was mixing. if it was a tough enough critter to make it all the way to isolated hawaii its very possible it could survive the trip through the canal.

on the otherhand, it might not be a bad thing for that to occur to the caribbean. it can take very poor water quality conditions and still survive. its a significant reef-builder and with all the other corals in the caribbean on the decline it might be able to survive in the environment regardless.

 

[Anonymous]

Well if Louey's tank is any indication then Poccis will be spreading readily

 

[Anonymous]

Cixel, I was being sarcastic :lol: I well aware of the corals in HI

 

[Anonymous]

I'm going to hate going to Maui next year because I'll see so much stuff I'm not allowed to take home

The coral diversity there is pretty low. A whole lotta Pocillopora, and not much else.

and Porites.

 

[Anonymous]

actually there is porites there and also here in florida but you wouldnt want to collect it even if it were legal because it requires such perfect water conditions, its extremely slow growing and requires tons of light.

WRONG. Blanket statements = dumb.

 

[72xmulch]

check this guy out. he has "These were collected from the Fla. Keys" in all of his auctions. http://stores.ebay.com/IslandMarineLife

 

[condiman1]

what some people wont do for money