Quite possible, especially considering that "live rock" that currently is coming in is really pretty, as you say, bare. If I were a betting man, I'd wager that Fiji is scraping the bottom of the barrel in the LR market, that there's nothing left to "harvest" without doing some serious reef damage, and that this "Live Rock" that's being shipped now is either being "cultured" by placing it in the ocean (from dry land) or possibly being dredged up. NOTHING remains that clean in the ocean if it's been there for even a short period of time. Think about how encrusted our rocks become, in our tanks, with such a comparative lack of diversity. I've pulled handball sized hunks of rock up off of beaches here in NY/NJ after a storm that were completely encrusted with algae, worms, sponges, forams, sps coral, etc. and have also seen year to year transformations in the Carribbean (bare rock becoming completely encrusted the following year). Because we're not currently getting similar results out of Fiji, my own conclusion can only be that these rocks they're currently shipping are "cultured". Which, hey, is fine by me. Less sponge life, less muck, yuck, and ammonia spikes, and quicker "cure" times. I do miss getting real "uncured" rock, tho.
