Petition to Ban Live Rock Collection in Fiji

[MaryHM]

Seems that Walt thinks live rock collection IS sustainable and that there is no scientific evidence to prove otherwise. Here it is, from his own site:

http://www.pacificaquafarms.com/live-rock.htm

However, they found no evidence to prove that the environmental Gods were justified condemning the aquarium world for sharing the fruits of this strange new rock with those that lived in the promised land.

 

[John_Brandt]

I'm only presenting the facts as I know them.

Facts based on???

I spoke with numerous Fiji resource managers at MO-Hawaii. LR collection with chisels is a concern there. It is happening. The collectors approach the site from shore and are collecting in water shallow enough to stand (low tide?). Once the loose stuff is collected at a particular site all that remains is the "bedrock" that is just below it. They are collecting from a carbonate ridge that fringes the island. Storms may continue to loosen rock but when that is unavailable or gone chisels are used - at least in some cases.

 

[John_Brandt]

"This is wrong! We didn't spend a decade getting live rock collection banned throughout the U.S., just so that this terrible practice would be inflicted instead on Fiji's coral reefs."

What do you think he means by we?

I don't know and I was asking if you did. Sometimes people use the term "we" meaning their side (environmentalism), but not themselves specifically. This petition is so loosely presented that one doesn't know where they are coming from. Was RGI directly responsible for the Florida LR ban or are they making generalized statements?

 

[Fish_dave]

Hey Mary,

That quote was approved by Walt but be a little careful about what you say comes from Walt. He does not control what goes on or comes out of Pacific Aqua Farms any more. You can not automatically assume that everything from Pacific Aqua Farms is from Walt.

I have seen the rock collection practices in Fiji. I have watched the guys use "breaker bars" to collect rock. It is not really crow bars but are larger bars generally used for demolition. I was in Fiji long ago and I believe sent the first boxes of live rock out of Fiji. It was long before Walt came over, he was still in Tonga doing what were then the best corals for the industry. We did just pick up the rock by hand that went out in that first shipment. They were perfectly sized pieces just sitting on the bottom of the intertidal area between the shore and the barrier reef. Those were the days. The rock was worth something back then also, the rock was priced high and Fiji freight was low at the time. No wonder so many people jumped onto the rock gravy train then. Now the price is way low and the freight has skyrocketed. Nobody makes anything much on Fiji rock any more. But I digress. There are breaker bars in use on some of the rock reefs being collected.

Dave

 

[MaryHM]

That quote was approved by Walt but be a little careful about what you say comes from Walt. He does not control what goes on or comes out of Pacific Aqua Farms any more. You can not automatically assume that everything from Pacific Aqua Farms is from Walt.

Then my apologies to Walt. The home page welcome had his name signed to it, so I just assumed. I, of all people, should know about assumptions.

Thanks for your first hand account of what you saw in Fiji. Also for the info over on the netting thread. Interesting info from a different perspective sure is nice around here!

 

[Rikko]

This may be relevant:
Local LFS where I got my tonga rock told me they'd feel bad ordering me a box of Fiji rock (I was tempted towards Fiji simply because the box price was a lot lower) because "all that's coming out of Fiji lately are little cannonballs".
Might very well vary between exporters (and I have no way of finding out who they use), but that sounds to me like the collectors are running out of the big chunks and are picking up smaller debris now.
Mayhap any "big" Fiji rock could be suspect of being chipped from the reef, but I doubt they'd be bothering with the little stuff I had described to me (and I saw a later shipment in their curing tanks - sure would have needed a lot of epoxy to make any stable structure out of that).

 

[Kalkbreath]

Silly .......there is so much lose rock laying around in the shallows that it would be like making your own sand instead of scooping some off the beach, .. Next .........US fish And Wildlife will confiscate any rock with hard corals on it ......{The whole shipment mind you }most attatched rock has too much coral on it . Then consider that any rock which has been crow bared off would have one side completely white where it was snapped off . There is a reason most Fiji rock landing in the US are brown boulders {rock broken off the reef takes years to tumble into a round shape .......Lastly take a look at some of the photos of the live rock collection areas Walt has on his site. There is so much rock available even in a one mile stretch, that the idea that we can over collect is silly ........................... This hobby collects less then 1/1000000 th [one-billionth of the available live rock on the big island of Fiji per year ......

 

[Kalkbreath]

Next, the idea that coral takes decades to reach the average size Fiji collects.......... shows how little the author knows about the issue. A good example would be Walts own aquaculture corals. One year is all it takes to grow out the average SPS coral . The corals collected in Fiji are tiny compared to the massive full grown coral heads dominating the reefs of Fiji. Its like collecting seedlings under the bottom of an oak tree..... there are thousands to choose from and most of these baby corals wont make it to adulthood anyway. Yes , sps corals are collected with chisels, the attached bit of rock shows that its a baby colony not a huge coral head broken up into smaller pieces. Not that any of these lobster saving Peta freeks care that they are not "Saving "a lobster by releasing it into a fresh water lake . Nor do they care that all evidence concerning live rock , fish or coral collection clearly demonstrates that their concerns are unfounded.

 

[naesco]

Common sense would tell everyone that there would have to be some means to pry the rock from the mass.
Crowbars would do the job.

Has anyone heard of dredging used as a means of collecting live rock?

 

[Fish_dave]

I have certainly heard of it. That is the easiest way to get live rock. Wait untill the harbor or some other piece of reef needs to be dredged and pick up the left overs.

It happened in Guam around 1990. They were dredging a chanel and the fish guys went out and shipped back a bunch of the dredged rock.

It happened in the Marshall Islands when the mayor of Majuro wanted the reef in front of her summer house dredged so that she could get a small boat to the shore line. South Pacific Imports built a small warehouse on her property and dredged as fast as they could for a couple of years shipping all of the dredged rock back to the states. They were not making any headway as the rock seemed to grow back as fast as they could dredge. The mayor finally got frustrated with it and hired some cranes to come in and speed up the process.

We routinely have to dredge out a small opening in the reef in front of our clam farm. We send the coral heads out in containers to the decorative coral guys. It seems like we just get done with a container and we have to do it again. The dang stuff just grows back like weeds and we are continually having to hack it out. I am not talking about a large area here, only about 6 feet wide and 30 to 50 yards long. It takes about 4 to 5 20 foot containers a year to keep it clear.

Dave

 

[John_Brandt]

The future of Fiji's live rock


By Sian Owen
World Wildlife Fund
January 15, 2004


A couple of hours west of Suva, Fiji’s capital, an unpaved road winds through the sugarcane plantations to the coast and Malomalo village. Of the 150 people who live here, one-third depend directly on the ocean for their primary source of income. But not all this income comes from fishing — a significant part comes from harvesting "live rock".

Live rock is actually dead coral or rock covered with coralline algae — pink- or purple-coloured algae found growing on rocky substrata in all of the world’s oceans. It’s used in aquariums to form a reef base in order to house tropical fish, corals, and invertebrates. The coralline algae also help keep the water clean.

The live rock trade is a booming business, growing at a rate of 12–30 per cent per year since 1990. With two-thirds of the world’s 1.5 million aquarium hobbyists, the US is the world’s largest consumer of live rock, representing more than 90 per cent of the trade. Fiji is a major exporter of live aquarium products to the international market.

This trade, which includes live coral and fish as well as live rock, is crucial for some Fijian villages, where the only alternative sources of income are low-skilled jobs in the sugarcane plantations and in tourist resorts. In 2001, over 800,000kg of live rock was harvested and exported from Fiji alone.

The extraction of live rock takes place along the edges of the reef, with villagers selectively targeting rock covered with light- to dark-pink coralline algae. The villagers break up slabs of rock using iron rods. These are loaded up onto a bilibili, a bamboo raft, and dragged onto the beach by horses, where the rock is placed into boxes and loaded onto a waiting truck which takes it to a processing facility. Once at the facility, the rock is placed under showers that continually spray salt water. The rock is trimmed of all visible green algae growth and graded according to shape, weight, and percentage of coralline algae cover. The rock is left under these showers for 24–72 hours before shipment.

Transporting live rock on a bilibili (bamboo raft). © Secretariat of the Pacific Community


In the early 1990s, the villagers of Malomalo negotiated a deal with Ocean 2000, an indigenous company that supplies live rock and fish for export. Fiji’s entire coastline is under customary tenure, with the rights to resource use belonging to individual villages. At the end of a series of traditional formal meetings, an agreement was reached with a contract signed by the Custodian of the Fishing Grounds and the sole license for live rock removal in the area belonging to the village Chief, Ratu Saula Maiyale.

Since 1994, live rock has been collected at Malomalo for Ocean 2000 by the traditional male users of the reef, both on a full time and an occasional basis. The rock is reimbursed for $US0.70 per kilogram, which is divided among the collectors ($US0.50), the custodian ($US0.10), and the marine reserve that forms part of the village’s traditional fishing grounds ($US0.10). Full-time harvesters extract up to 200kg per week. At an average of 150kg live rock per week, some 7500kg are extracted for sale by a single full time harvester in a year, contributing $US3750 to the annual household income.

The live rock trade is obviously is very important for Malomalo’s inhabitants. But after nine years of extraction, the villagers were aware that these activities could have long-term consequences. Large-scale removal of live rock can destroy habitat for fish and marine invertebrates, can undermine the structure of coral reefs, and can lead to increased underwater erosion. This is exacerbated as not all harvested live rock is accepted, meaning that much more is harvested than the official figures suggest. Large quantities are often rejected, with the wastage evident as piled accumulations along the beach.

Concern about the sustainability of the industry was also raised in Fiji and in other parts of the world at around the same time. In 2001, the Fijian government called for an environmental assessment to inform policy on the trade. Also at this time, WWF was exploring a partnership with the Marine Aquarium Council (MAC) in relation to their newly launched certification system for the aquarium trade.

All of these forces collided last year, when WWF and MAC embarked on a project to answer the government’s concerns. The project’s goal is twofold: to develop community-based processes for wise coral harvesting and management, and to help the government structure sound policies and legislation that will support a sustainable aquarium trade.

As part of the project, WWF has facilitated a series of community workshops to raise awareness on monitoring, evaluating, and managing marine resources. In Malomalo, the consensus following the workshops was that the productivity of their marine environment and certain marine resources was indeed becoming depleted. As a result, the village designated part of its traditional fishing grounds a tabu area, banned from extractive use.

WWF scientists also visit Malomalo regularly to gather data from the site. In October 2002, a team from WWF set out to conduct its first-ever Biological and Socioeconomic Assessment of the area, looking at the status of the environment and aspects of the live rock trade in Malomalo. Other visits aim to raise awareness within the community and to help them with their management plans. The main focus at the moment is the Collection Area Management Plan (CAMP,) a prerequisite to being certified under the MAC.

Each time they come, the scientists are first invited inside, where they sit barefoot on woven mats and begin the ceremony to request permission to visit the project site. A gift of yaqona, the root of which is used to make the slightly narcotic traditional drink which is consumed at all traditional ceremonies, is presented to the chief’s representative, who then asks the elders to permit scientists to visit the project site.

It’s too early yet to tell the results of this collaboration, but dialogue between traditional knowledge and modern science has begun, a first step to ensure the long-term stability of a reef and the people that it supports. Malomalo has acted upon what many around the world have yet to recognize — that marine resources, although hidden from sight, are under constant pressure, and need sound monitoring and management to ensure their continued provision of life for us all.

Sian Owen is Coordinator of WWF's Corals Initiative.

http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/marine/news/news.cfm?uNewsID=10626

 

[Kalkbreath]

There is a very easy way to juxtapose the amount of rock collected and the amount of rock available to collect in the collection zones. The 800,000 kilos is about 2,000,000 pounds. Your average box of live rock is about fifty pounds . Now if we take and open a box of Fiji rock then lay the rocks on the floor in a group ........how large an area would you say one fifty pound box of fiji rock would cover? About one-half a square yard [three feet by one and a half feet] . So then it would take two 50# boxes to cover one square yard. Now with 2 million pounds being collected in fifty pound boxes ....thats 40,000 boxes. And if each box covers one-half of a square yard then its 20,000 square yards that were are removing from Fiji. How large is an area 20,000 square yards? Well a foot ball field is about 5,000 square yards so then four foot ball fields is the equivalent of 20,000 square yards or what we removed in live rock in 2001 from Fiji. So even if we removed all 800,000 kilos from one square mile of coast line . we would only be removing less then twenty percent of the rock in that area! And there is about 250 miles of coastline on the one island we collect live rock from .......out of the 300 islands known as Fiji' " Do you feel silly yet?

 

[Kalkbreath]

http://www.pacificaquafarms.com/harvestmap.jpg even if all 800,000 klos was removed from this one area }with the markings] ............it would amount to less then twenty percent of the total rock in the area . Not to mention that the rocks are piled a few feet thick in most of this area. [my comparion is assuming that the rocks are only piled one high] And keep in mind that the rock is continuing to replenish itself every day .

 

[nanocat]

Wow, this IS great news. I'm clearing out my tanks right now and putting my live rock up on eBay.

***RARE*** Collector's Item Live Rock. Only $50 a pound. :lol:

 

[naesco]

The extraction of live rock takes place along the edges of the reef, with villagers selectively targeting rock covered with light- to dark-pink coralline algae. The villagers break up slabs of rock using iron rods

 

[JennM]

What's your point, Wayne? If the slab is too big to fit in a box, they break it up. You seem to be implying that they are prying it right off the reef. The way I read it is that they break up the larger pieces, into smaller pieces.

Guess it's all in how you spin it. To me a "slab" is a "piece", a flat one at that. Nowhere does it say they are prying sections of the reef structure off.

Jenn

 

[Kalkbreath]

They dont even do that in Fiji very often .......Broken rocks look like broken rocks........Fiji rock is mostly small round boulders .....You dont get round pieces when you break rock. The proof is in the boxes landing in the USA. Again this highlights that the sophomoric author has little knowledge on the issue. Live rock that is large enough to need breaking up ........does not tumble about in the water. large rock that does not tumble every so often in the collection areas grows green algae ....NOT pink Coraline. Another reason large stationary rocks are not selected during the collection process......... :wink: