CoralTrade

The Coral Trade

Demand and Use of Coral: Business Behind the Trade

The Coral Trade has been around for ages and is nearly impossible to trace back to a single event or time period. From the first days that humans discovered the underwater world of coral reefs they were fascinated by it and wanted to conquer it and owning coral was made into a status symbol. In the 19th century, it was customary for young English gentlemen to spend a few months, even years, on a “grand tour” of Europe, returning home with mementos that might have included trinkets of coral from this Neapolitan community at the foot of Mount Vesuvius. Convinced that it warded off evil spirits, the Victorians, like the ancient Romans and Egyptians, prized Corallium rubrum, the precious red coral species found in the deep waters of the Mediterranean. Coral continued to enjoy a special place among jewelry and fashion lovers, until fairly recently.

Current Views on the Coral Trade:

Now, some jewelers have stopped using it, worried about the environmental effect that the trade has had. Campaigners also want to offer red coral more protection from over-fishing. But others, particularly those who rely on coral for their livelihood, believe they should be allowed to continue working with the beautiful species, in a sustainable way. Tiffany, the high-end U.S. jeweler, stopped selling coral in 2002. Other companies like Stephen Dweck and Temple St. Clair have since followed suit.Tiffany signed on as a sponsor when the nonprofit group SeaWeb, based in Maryland, started a “Too Precious to Wear” campaign to promote coral conservation in January 2008. Yet not every jeweler sees the issue in the same terms. Robert M. Taylor, president and chief executive of Maui Divers Jewelry, the largest jewelry retailer in the Hawaiian Islands, said he believed in coral conservation. However, he took issue with the “Too Precious to Wear” campaign’s core message that corals are in crisis, suffering from high consumer demand and, hence, should not be used in jewelry. “It’s the opposite of what we feel,” he said. “Precious coral is too precious not to wear.”

Unlike the Corallium (pink and red coral) which is the target of the SeaWeb campaign, the precious black coral that makes up the bulk of Maui Divers’ coral sales is already listed on Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, known as Cites. The listing does not ban the sale of black coral; it does, however, mandate a strict reporting regime designed to prove that trade is “not detrimental” to the species’ survival in the wild. Which makes it hard to enforce and monitor.

Uses of Coral Beyond Jewelry

Coral is used for a variety of different things from jewelry as mentioned previously to construction, medicine and traded amongst avid aquarium collectors. On the international level the U.S. imports more coral for aquarium use than any other country. While coral jewelry sales are on the decline the live trade of coral for aquariums is continuing to rise in popularity. This becomes an issue as policies vary from country to country so they can be obtained in illegal manners in a different country and then shipped into the United States. This issue is discussed later on in this article. There is a current shift to aquaculture instead of wild harvesting in current years. This shift suggests that, contrary to the conventional view that the live coral trade is a threat to coral reef ecosystems, the buying and selling of corals could help create a powerful incentive for protecting reefs in many small island communities, these scientists say.“The difference in a year is staggering,” said the study’s lead author, Andrew Rhyne, an assistant professor of marine biology at Roger Williams University and a research scientist at the New England Aquarium.

Particularly in Indonesia, the world’s largest supplier of stony corals and home to more coral reef areas than any other nation, many producers have “learned that if you collect a really beautiful, interesting coral, if you export that, you get to export it one time,” Dr. Rhyne said. “If you keep it and farm it, you get to export it forever.”

As far as coral as a building material is concerned the most popular use on land is coral rag. The corals provide lime for use as building blocks. Coral rag is an important local building material in places such as the East African coast. Coral is also used in medicine. The pharmaceutical company, Bristol-Myers Squibb in the recent year has liscenced and patented a chemcial from the coral Elutherobia called eleutherobin. Eleutherobin is able to bind a protein material within cellular structures called microtubles and make them extremely rigid, a process that prevents cancer cells from dividing. It works in a similar manner to taxol a recent breakthrough in breast and ovarian cancer. Coral is also used for bone grafts using a product named hydroxyapaitite (HA), this is made from the exoskeletons of marine coral. HA is similar in structure to bones in humans. This allows it to fill voids from trauma and fractures to upper portions of the long bones. The FDA has approved the HA product known as Pro Osteon Implant 50 made by the company Interpore International since 1992. When implanted into a void the web-like structure allows it to surround the bone and fibrous tissues to infiltrate the implant and it becomes a part of the body biologically.

Ethical Concerns behind the Trade culture

• wild animal trade
• “pet trade”

Legal issues and Policies on Coral Reef Trade

• Executive Order no. 13089 for the Protection of Coral Reefs
• Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)
• discussed during Clinton Administration
• World Trade Organization (WTO)

Trade used for Destructive practices

• removing reefs & removal methods
• manipulating the poisons
• stun fish & treatment of other marine life
• killing coral

Biological Damage caused by removal of Corals

• long generation periods for regrowth
• importance of coral to other organisms within reef ecosystem
• statistics/percentages of marine life based in coral reefs and the natural destruction and death of coral

What Can Be Done to Reverse This? How Can We Help?

• regrowth techniques
• create more laws and regulations
• reservations
• programs that work with restoring reefs