The law and Flordia ricordea/ricordia

[bobimport]

Please note the new ruleing on Fl. Ricordea. You may NOT take any rock with the polyps. Not the sq. inch some say. Most of you know who I am but let me tell the rest. My name is Bob Kelton owner of D.R.Imports and drimports.com. I am the ONLY[/u] importer from Haiti that brings in ricordea on rock. Please note that the Fl Marine officers are scanning the web for ricordea with rock attached. They then check with me to see if I have sold it. If not then cha ching.

P.S. any wholesaler selling a pet shop in Fl is required to have a fl wholesale Lic. $1500.00[/url]

 

[Anonymous]

and the purpose of this thread is????

 

[Kalkbreath]

Cant you see?
Bob is excited that Florida collectors don't harm the environment any longer!
:roll:

Let me be the first to say that we share in your exuberance,
but more then likely its for very different reasons.....

 

[dizzy]

Despite the obvious self-serving nature of Bob's post, I for one appreciate the information. I hope the authorities do stop the illegal flow of bootleg corals that the internet enables. I've long been "suspicious" of sites like Burrfish that always seem to have rare colors of ricordea, even when the legal channels can't get it. If someone can't make an honest living in this business then they need to get a real job. Anyone buying this stuff is also guilty of complicity. Thanks Bob for making that clear.
Mitch

 

[JT]

If someone can't make an honest living in this business then they need to get a real job.

Amen, brother.

- UncleJT

 

[clarionreef]

Guys,
Shhhhh!
CITES quotas allocated by bogus science and bribery and a cyanide trade in violation of all laws....
this all covered up by a million dollar whitewash by a group that has worked hard and spent millions to produce no clean fish and no reform.

Honest living ? Honest living? Our entire trade is based on a lie and a illegal methodology that only survives in dishonest bureacracies.
The whole planet bans coral 'harvesting' except... Indonesia, Solomons...[ corrupt ] and Tonga, Fiji.... [ desperate] and a little bit of Kenya.
Who are we fooling?
It could be honest...but it's not.
50 other tropical countries ban it coral collecting including ours.
And all countries ban cyanide fishing.
Honest living or an unwitting naive one?
Steve
PS.
I think we'd best take a recipe from the President Clinton playbook on gays in the military;
Don't ask ...don't tell.

 

[tinyreef]

Please note that the Fl Marine officers are scanning the web for ricordea with rock attached. They then check with me to see if I have sold it. If not then cha ching.

what if the guy is a coral farmer/aquaculturist? (yeah, yeah, it ain't technically a coral blah blah)

the seller can claim it's a propagated piece.

plus, larger colonies can be split into smaller ones for more total dollars. like an auto chop-shop.

i just thought it was unlikely that the game wardens can really regulate that effectively or accurately. doesn't mean they won't try anyways, of course. (d'oh!)

 

[Kalkbreath]

The whole planet bans coral 'harvesting' except... Indonesia, Solomons...[ corrupt ] and Tonga, Fiji.... [ desperate] and a little bit of Kenya.
Who are we fooling?
It could be honest...but it's not.
50 other tropical countries ban it coral collecting including ours.
.

Steve, remember Back when coral collection was legal in the USA? We sure had a lot of healthy coral reefs back then.
Steve, remember back when coral collection was legal in PI? There sure were a lot of healthy reefs then there too.
Steve, remember when coral collection was legal in Tonga, Fiji, Solomon's.....? The reefs sure are nice and healthy there as well.
For those whom feel the collection of rock when collecting recordia somehow enables white band disease or effects the health of the reefs by decreasing habitat. Consider this , perhaps had we placed more attention on the real issues killing our US coral reefs instead of constant renaming of this sanctuary and that .......we still might have some live coral for the Game wardens to protect. Pretty sad that now they are left with only limestone rocks to protect.

 

[clarionreef]

Lots of things ruin coral reefs to be sure...
PI banned coral collection decades ago...
and then took coral killing food and aquarium cyanide fishing to all time levels...killing more coral then can be imagined.

There has been no coral collecting there for a long, long time [ except for the small local reef retail market...that has given us Horge.]

They didn't need coral collecting to ruin their reefs at all. They allowed and tolerated anything else that did it.
The Bureau of Fisheries has pretty much been a chamber of commerce for destructive fisheries industries and when pressed....jails a few poor fisherman to show 'activity.
Exporters and business people have get out of jail free cards and are exempt from prosecution.
Steve

 

[clarionreef]

Kalk,
Tonga and Fiji reefs are just fine in many areas...except where we've been with too many hammers and crowbars. chisels and prybars.
Busting up old coral colonies to 'harvest' the nice symetrical pieces...leaving the rest is one of those 'you don't want to know more'...type things...
and hammering corals to collect flame hawks in Tonga is disgusting and very much against the interests of Tonga.
Their fisheries however, are pretty easy going and benign.
Nice folks...
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

Please note the new ruleing on Fl. Ricordea. You may NOT take any rock with the polyps. Not the sq. inch some say. Most of you know who I am but let me tell the rest. My name is Bob Kelton owner of D.R.Imports and drimports.com. I am the ONLY[/u] importer from Haiti that brings in ricordea on rock. Please note that the Fl Marine officers are scanning the web for ricordea with rock attached. They then check with me to see if I have sold it. If not then cha ching.

P.S. any wholesaler selling a pet shop in Fl is required to have a fl wholesale Lic. $1500.00[/url]

once again i ask the poster-what is the purpose of the post?

 

[Anonymous]

it seems as if he's using the bb to pose a veiled threat of legal action for potential actions of others, i'm wondering if that's appropriate here

 

[Anonymous]

He musta just finished this thread then http://www.reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.p ... 2&start=20

 

[dizzy]

I thought Bob's post was more of a heads up than anything and completely appropriate. Some dealers may be breaking the law without even realizing it. Hobbyists too. If this isn't the place to notify people when the laws change then where is? The law feels it is your responsibility to know the laws, and not theirs to inform you about changes. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Bob simply warned that the Florida coral cops will be looking to the internet to find lawbreakers. I doubt their jurisdiction goes beyond laws broken in Florida, but other states or the fed may be willing to give them a helping hand. It may turn into the napstergate of the MO industry.
Mitch

 

[Anonymous]

I thought Bob's post was more of a heads up than anything and completely appropriate. Some dealers may be breaking the law without even realizing it. Hobbyists too. If this isn't the place to notify people when the laws change then where is? The law feels it is your responsibility to know the laws, and not theirs to inform you about changes. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Bob simply warned that the Florida coral cops will be looking to the internet to find lawbreakers. I doubt their jurisdiction goes beyond laws broken in Florida, but other states or the fed may be willing to give them a helping hand. It may turn into the napstergate of the MO industry.
Mitch

heh you get bashed if you dont identify yourself and you get bashed when you do!?!?!?! :roll:

 

[dizzy]

So Chris are you using my post as an example of bashing someone who identified himself? I think you need to work on your reading comprehension.
Mitch

 

[Kalkbreath]

Kalk,
Tonga and Fiji reefs are just fine in many areas...except where we've been with too many hammers and crowbars. chisels and prybars.
Busting up old coral colonies to 'harvest' the nice symetrical pieces...leaving the rest is one of those 'you don't want to know more'...type things...
and hammering corals to collect flame hawks in Tonga is disgusting and very much against the interests of Tonga.
Their fisheries however, are pretty easy going and benign.
Nice folks...
Steve

The corals are small intact colonies, shipping broken coral heads went out ten years ago .....as they dont survive shipping. [shipping costs more then the corals]
So few flame hawks are shipped out of Tonga that even if there are crow bar fishermen its a moot point.
There are people using crow bars to extract rock to build home foundations and sea walls.
Care to estimate how much live rock is removed per year for construction of even one tourist center?

 

[Anonymous]

Please note the new ruleing on Fl. Ricordea. You may NOT take any rock with the polyps. Not the sq. inch some say. Most of you know who I am but let me tell the rest. My name is Bob Kelton owner of D.R.Imports and drimports.com. I am the ONLY[/u] importer from Haiti that brings in ricordea on rock. Please note that the Fl Marine officers are scanning the web for ricordea with rock attached. They then check with me to see if I have sold it. If not then cha ching.

P.S. any wholesaler selling a pet shop in Fl is required to have a fl wholesale Lic. $1500.00[/url]

:?:

 

[Anonymous]

So Chris are you using my post as an example of bashing someone who identified himself? I think you need to work on your reading comprehension.
Mitch

meant to quote vitz!

 

[clarionreef]

Wiping out flame hawks in Tonga is a tragedy;

So few flame hawks are shipped out of Tonga that even if there are crow bar fishermen its a moot point.

And thats because the trade destroyed most of their niche...[with crowbars and hammers ] the shallow water corals that housed them in abundance in the early 90's. For thousands of years...they were there. Inside of a decade, they were decimated.
The aquarium trade did that...all by itself!

PS.
and Hammers, torches, frogspawns, caulestras, lobos all get broken off of larger colonies....leaving doughnut craters of unwanted pieces