Reef Bones?

[coralreefer]

Wonder if this is what they sell as reef bones

http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/local_news/article/0,2545,TCP_16736_5128468,00.html

Fort Pierce firm's chief pleads guilty to illegally importing protected coral rock
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By DEREK SIMMONSEN
derek.simmonsen@scripps.com
Posted at 2:48 p.m.
Updated at 4:29 p.m.
November 8, 2006
MIAMI â€" The president of a Fort Pierce company accused of illegally importing more than 42,000 pounds of protected coral rock from Haiti has pleaded guilty to a charge in federal court.

Richard Greenfield, 46, of Fort Pierce, and his business, CaribSea Inc., a local aquarium supply company, allegedly brought 357 bags of the material into the United States through Miami in March in violation of the federal Lacey Act, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Betsey Moore, vice president of the company, said Wednesday that the material, often used in construction in Haiti, was mined from the land, not the ocean, and no living coral was harmed. Coral rock is typically used in aquariums for decoration, she said.

CaribSea Inc. did not have the proper permits to bring the material into the country, but has since obtained the necessary documents, Moore said.

"Plain and simple, we made a mistake," she said. "It was never intentional."

The company was sentenced Tuesday to three years of court-supervised probation and ordered to pay $25,000 to the South Florida National Park Trust to benefit the Coral Nursery Program in Biscayne National Park. Greenfield was put on three years of probation and ordered to pay a $25,000 fine.

He and his company are also liable for storage and transportation costs totaling more than $10,000 that were connected to the seizure and storage of the coral rock, court records show. Greenfield could have faced up to a year in prison on the charge and the company faced a maximum fine of $200,000.

The coral rock, which has a market value of roughly $75,000, will be transferred to the nonprofit Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution to avoid it being used for commercial purposes. Erick Larson, director of research administrative at Harbor Branch, said the material will likely be used in conch study projects.

All types of coral rock, an invertebrate within the phylum coelenterate, are covered under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, which more than 150 countries have signed to prevent extinction of various species of plants and animals by restricting their sale, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Export or re-import certificates issued by the U.S. government are required to bring the material into the country.

CaribSea, which has been in business locally for 35 years, has never had any similar violations, Moore said. According to the company's Web site, it has supplied hundreds of public aquariums, aquaculture facilities and home aquarists with millions of pounds of marine and freshwater substrates since its founding.

 

[phljess]

This is a big crock of crap if you ask me. If the rock is dead why would it fall under such tight scrutiny. I could understand if it were part of a living reef but I am sure there would be no problem bringing in other types of rock, shale, limestone, etc.... The fine seems a little execessive to me. The rock would definately be in a much better place than being mixed into some concrete for lean-to shack down in Haitii.

"CaribSea Inc. did not have the proper permits to bring the material into the country, but has since obtained the necessary documents, Moore said."

I bet they will get the permits from this point on.

 

[Brock Fluharty]

Locally????? I see their bagged live sand in every LFS around here...that's what I used in my 75 gallon when I set it up over a year ago...that's cool that they are using the sand for research purposes though.

 

[coralreefer]

I bet they will get the permits from this point on.

Me too

 

[firefish2020]

Too late we were notified about 2 weeks ago that CS "Reef Bone" would no longer be available and we were given no answers sounds right to me. I always wondered why that stuff looked so fresh at times.

I like CS but if it was being taken from the reefs then they should have known better IMO.

 

[phljess]

"Betsey Moore, vice president of the company, said Wednesday that the material, often used in construction in Haiti, was mined from the land, not the ocean, and no living coral was harmed. Coral rock is typically used in aquariums for decoration, she said."

I see no harm if it was mined from the land but as you know, a lot of times reef bone has to be cured and if it needs "cured" then it must have had some forms of life on it.

 

[firefish2020]

On several occasions I had my doubts as the coraline algae on some of the rocks looked like it was still alive. In fact I heard several customers tell me that their RB rock had algae that had "came back to life".

Makes you wonder but I would seriously doubt a Co. that old and well known did this intentionally. But you just never know and we wont ever.

 

[fishmon]

I got in like 10 boxes of the stuff one time, you could smell that it had recently been alive, no way some of those pieces were "mined from the land" these had to have come from a reef, greed will make people do really stupid things.

 

[LtPiper]

I wouldn't be so quick to throw the blame on CaribSea. They are after all dealing with a 3rd world company that is out to make a buck. I would be wiling to bet the boxes with the "live" rock in it never was looked at by the CaribSea people. If they are like most they have the stuff drop shipped from the source and have no idea what is going in those boxes.

 

[firefish2020]

If they are like most they have the stuff drop shipped from the source and have no idea what is going in those boxes.

Actually the first shipments of RB several years back were nice they were very dry and ready to rinse and go, they were an overnight best seller. Then following one of the bad hurricanes (the one that nearly leveled ORA about 3 years back), we started getting in boxes that were wet and smelled funny. One of our customers bought some of this rock and placed it in his tank. The next day almost everything was dead the rock caused a massive ammonia spike. He called CB and within 24 hours allegedly the president of the Co. called him and sent him a check for his loss. After this the boxes began shipping with the now familiar warning labels that state that RB could cause a tank to cycle. At the time they said the warehouse was flooded by the storms a plausible explanation but the rock kept coming in looking more like fresh collected rock after that. They may have had no idea like you said but even I suspected something was up so it is likely some form of quality control had to be in play and was for whatever reason ignored.

 

[phljess]

"Too late we were notified about 2 weeks ago that CS "Reef Bone" would no longer be available and we were given no answers sounds right to me. I always wondered why that stuff looked so fresh at times."

What are you guys going to start getting for base rock now that reef bone is not available? Or is it available again now?

 

[firefish2020]

Yeh Im not sure, I just told Barry the news today. It did'nt surprise him at all he said. It really is a shame too this was prob the greatest product for reefers on a budget and those of us that needed a lot of filler rock. We will just go back to what we had in the days before Reefbone got everyone in this hobby spoiled I suppose

 

[phljess]

I have used tufa before and it seems to be nice base. Very porus and colors up well has alot of calcium also I believe. I think it comes from around the Great Lakes.

 

[fishmon]

Just to let everyone know, I feel Carib Sea is a very top notch company. I jumped the gun a little on the greed comment, its just that too many times its very true. They put out good products, and its a shame that we are loosing this one.

 

[coralreefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8513708#post8513708 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by fishmon
I got in like 10 boxes of the stuff one time, you could smell that it had recently been alive, no way some of those pieces were "mined from the land" these had to have come from a reef

and if they were mined they wouldn't be "almost live rock" as advertised that's why I bolded that part.

I wouldn't be so quick to throw the blame on CaribSea. They are after all dealing with a 3rd world company that is out to make a buck. I would be wiling to bet the boxes with the "live" rock in it never was looked at by the CaribSea people. If they are like most they have the stuff drop shipped from the source and have no idea what is going in those boxes.

Umm they are the source. It was a cargo container with 42,000 pounds of coral rock imported by them not a couple boxes of drop shipped rock.

I agree they are a top notch company with many fine products and I'm sure they will get everything sorted out soon. I actually had no idea they were no longer selling "reef bones" until Ron posted.

 

[captbunzo]

(In the voice of Paul Harvey)

And now, the rest of the story..... Quotes from Anthony Calfo over in MD (he actually called the company).

To all - the the above story/issue re: Carib Sea did not make sense to me at face value - the company is so big, so industry friendly... and so smart, etc

So I talked to the company directly for the skinny on it... turns out the matter is as suspected (administrative oversight... non-nefarious, and rather minor IMO):

The gist of it from ems:

------------------------------

The product was our reef bones. It is dead live rock, and a common construction material in Haiti and many other tropical islands. It was a nice looking product when we released it several years back... as I am sure you are aware, all of the laws, and permits for these various resources can be very confusing. We simply did not have the proper permit in place for one container of product of the several we had brought in over the last few years. We now have the correct permit. It’s funny a simple $100 permit cost us upwards of a quarter of a million dollars in fines, legal fees, storage fees, and the product they kept.

Fortunately we learned a lot from this experience. We will continue on our path, helping and donating time, money, and product to research groups and conservation efforts such as our program with the Blue Iguana Recovery Program (www.blueiguana.ky) to help save the Blue Iguana.

People tend to overlook anything good, and focus on the size of the fine and company name.

And a second post:

so the summary is... much like the unclear (and often unknown by officers themselves) Fish and Wildlife regs that badly jamb up LFS owners importing (and kill animals for the vague paper recs) - Caribsea's oversight was a documentation issue on one among several legal shipments. And their precedent was all legal shipments too.

This reminds me of the thousands (I'm not kidding) of clams that F&W has killed by delaying shipments of AQUACULTURED clams because the import docs did not list the gravel(!) that was stuck under the clamshell (farmers use local aggregate to sometimes grow baby clams).

This is beurocracy folks... not poaching. Caribsea is a good company... please give them a break.

(and for my name/personality... let me state that I have never taken so much as a free sample at a tradeshow or otherwise from this company. My opinion here is unbiased)

 

[firefish2020]

This is beurocracy folks... not poaching. Caribsea is a good company... please give them a break.

I really hope all is well with this as it is by far one of the best products offered to hobbyist IMO.

However, if it was mined then some of it had to be mined near or in a submerged oceanic environment. Caribsea is a huge Co. and offers some of the greatest substrates and live sand for all aquarium needs. I don't think anyone here (on this thread) is being hard on them or disrespectful at all, but rather stating what they witnessed first hand. I personally saw boxes that were too wet to put on the shelf at times, and others that smelled almost like uncured rock. It is possible the rocks got wet prior to shipping or were washed off prior as well. One of the most interesting things I noticed was that when the product was first made available it was BONE DRY with many pieces in the boxes. After the hurricanes as I stated earlier the boxes came in wet and with warning labels eventually attached with fewer small rocks and soaked through larger ones. The rock inside was even wrapped in plastic at times.

Im not sure what happened or allegedly happened but I know what I and many others saw. I also know we received the news that RB would not be available from our suppliers and no explanation was given. Then this came out, coincidence bad timing? All the above, who knows, just calling the plays as they go down nothing more.

turns out the matter is as suspected (administrative oversight... non-nefarious, and rather minor IMO

By the way for the record I agree with this statement, there is much that goes on in a large company and even the execs can get confused with all the permits, and legalities today. Hopefully lessons were learned and things will go much smoother from this point on and CS will continue to offer the great products that they are known for and not be judged to harshly by past mistakes.

 

[mcox33]

I seem to remember a Tsumi(sp) in the area the rock was collected and assumed that the storm had washed it up onto the land. And that is still what I believe, as I have seen news reports from that area and Mike and I discussed all the rock laying around and the fact that it appeared as if it had washed up on to the land during the storm. I suppose that it could have all been collected by now but I doubt it. Or it could still be washing up and being picked up during low tide and appear to be fresh mined from the ocean when in fact it was on land. JMO

 

[firefish2020]

I seem to remember a Tsumi(sp) in the area the rock was collected and assumed that the storm had washed it up onto the land. And that is still what I believe

Not even close, this happened a good year before the tsunami.

 

[captbunzo]

Interesting perspectives. Thank you for sharing, folks!