Just for the record I fully support an outright ban on all taking of any wild coral and believe we should get by in our hobby on "home grown" coral alone. What I do not support is a blanket approach to banning all commerce in a particular coral when the decision is based on politics and pseudoscience and will in fact hurt the protection of biodiversity rather than help.
Now let's start talking about the "science" behind NOAA/NMFS. In particular let's examine the "data" on Euphyllia Paradivisa. . . .
As for your exercise, as someone who is familiar with data, you should know you can not extrapolate a conclusion from the information you submitted without committing all sorts of logical fallacies. If we're to "extrapolate" the way you want me to for red tailed black sharks (Epalzeorhynchos bicolour), we would conclude they are plentiful in the wild.
I now have a better understanding of what you perceive as "data."
So you don't like extrapolated data because it requires certain further refinement to make it accurate . . . I see . . . well guess what the entire basis for listing Euphyllia Paradivisa as threatened comes from one giant double extrapolation of data. There was no "scientific survey", no actual eyeballs counting euphyllia, just one big exercise in extrapolation.
Then there's the question of why this coral versus others? If the same extrapolation was used for other coral species what made Euphyllia different? I have a guess for that answer, and it's the opening line of one of the reports on Euphyllia Paradivis:
Justification:
This species is widespread and uncommon throughout its range. However, it is heavily harvested for the aquarium trade and extensive reduction of coral reef habitat due to a combination of threats
but guess what else . . . there is not one supporting fact or figure in the report for this blanket statement, no dollar amount, no colony count, no shipments docket, nothing except the blanket statement.
So here is how they estimated how much Euphyllia there is and what is happening to the population . . .
Estimates of coral cover loss, defined as the percentage of reefs with greater than 90% coral cover loss over at least the past 15 to 20 years (Wilkinson 2004); and of critically declining reef, defined as the percentage of reefs with between 50-90% coral cover loss and likely to join the total coral loss category within 10 to 20 years (Wilkinson 2004); were used as a surrogates for population reduction in combination with each species’ life history traits. For each species, a weighted average was calculated by multiplying the area of reef within the species distribution by the percent of total coral cover loss or the combined percent of total coral cover loss and critically declining reef reported from 17 different geographical regions defined by the 2004 GCRMN report (Wilkinson 2004). Only partial or complete occurrence of a species in a region was used and marginal inclusions were discounted. This method assumes that the percent coral cover loss reported for a region is the same across the entire region. The relationship between coral cover loss and population reduction is not always linear, however, as coral cover loss can occur in areas of lower or higher population density, and therefore can represent a slower or faster decline of the actual population size (RodrÃguez and Gaston 2002).
And, here's a comment from the 2004 Wilkinson report upon which most of these "extrapolations" were based . . . notice the "scientific" estimates were . . . wait for it . . .
WRONG
Until recently, the greatest concentration of coral reef biodiversity (known as the ‘coral triangle’) was considered to be centred on Indonesia, Philippines, and Papua New Guinea (the solid line on the map). However, a recent survey of the Solomon Islands led by The Nature Conservancy, has shown that the coral triangle should be extended further east to include this archipelago (dotted line on map). Not only should the Solomon Islands be included in the triangle, but also it contains the second highest biodiversity in the region after Central Indonesia (REA Chapter 9). This was not predicted prior to the survey, and the results show that the high diversity is due to a wide range of habitats in a small area and the generally good condition of the reefs
Oh but wait there's more . . . it turns out science as recently as last year grossly underestimated the recovery ability of corals . . .
Last year, marine biologist Peter Mumby took a dive into the Rangiroa lagoon, in French Polynesia. What he saw shocked him so much he thought he might be lost.
He’d expected to be surrounded by death, by a reef of dying coral whose skeletons were slowly crumbling into the sea. Instead, majestic, olive-green Porites corals, the size of large hippos, carpeted the sea floor, providing a playground for parrotfishes and the occasional shark that weaved between the cauliflower-shaped giants.
“I was absolutely astonished and delighted,” says Mumby, a professor at the Marine Spatial Ecology Lab of the University of Queensland, Australia.
He had good reason to be. In 1998, a heatwave, which raised ocean temperatures, had caused corals worldwide to go a deathly white - a process called bleaching - and die.
When Mumby had visited Tivaru on the Rangiroa lagoon six months later, he’d found a vast majority of the region’s prolific Porites coral, normally the hardiest of coral species, had followed suit. Based on the known growing rates for the species, Mumby predicted it would take the Porites nearly 100 years to recover, not 15.
“Our projections were completely wrong,” he says. “Sometimes it is really nice to be proven wrong as a scientist, and this was a perfect example of that.”
That'll be it for round 2. I don't expect to convince Leonard of anything, and I'll repeat my opening line once again. I fully support a ban on the taking of all wild coral, but I do not support a total ban on commerce even in one coral when that coral is well established in captivity, and I most certainly do not accept the "science" of the NOAA.
Just because someone has a degree in a scientific field doesn't make them perfect. They are subject to the same biases as anyone else especially when money or reputation is involved.
