[Nebthet]

CITES rules in and of themselves are no stupid when it comes to the documentation of corals and live rock directly from the ocean (maricultured) corals. However, they need to do more research and catch up with the times, as there are a great many places now across the world, like ORA who are Aquaculture Farming their own breed of corals, enhancing them for certain colour patterns or hardiness.

How many generations are these Aquatcutured corals from the original they purchased from the Ocean?? 3, 4, 8 generations beyond the original colony in addition to being interbred with different colours of the same species and thus changed from the original.

For example, let's use wild wolves and state they are illegal to hunt, kill, or own as a pet (which they are), and then lets say because of that, whatever breeds with the wolf is going to be called a wolf because it has the wolf gene in it, despite however many (4, 5, 7), generations that wolf gene has been bred out of the original animal and the result is the Husky, which many people own as a pet today. But because of the closed rules of an act like CITES right now, which is not taking into account the human caused interbreeding of said species, we cannot own that husky as a pet or if we happen to have one, cannot sell it to other countries easily despite the desire for them, because CITES is still technically calling them a wild wolf, even though they are not.

So in terms of corals. CITES is calling all corals maricultured (directly from the Ocean), whether or not they have been taken from the Ocean today, or 10 generations ago. They are not taking into account the changes that have happened over the last few years with Aquacultured farming and this is what they need to change.

It is not the fact that all these different corals and listed independently under the Maricultured listing within Appendices II of their forms, it is the fact they are not recognizing the extreme differentiations between corals taken from our Oceans, to the ones which have been changed and bred by man to be more than can ever be found in our Ocean's today.

What I am saying is that CITES needs to take a look into Aquaculture farming and make a determination for leniency on it's Appendices and the cost of export permits for those aquacultured corals that have never touched or been harvested from the Ocean.

If they want to continue to monitor the trade in Aquacultured corals that is fine. Honest businesses like ORA who know their latin names of their corals can easily list them on the sheets when exporting them to businesses in other countries.
The problem that it appears to be is the cost to the business wishing to export these corals to othe countries, whether to businesses or what not.

ORA doesn't want to export to Canada because of the cost and the paperwork involved.
The same with Liveaquaria. In the past, when they were exporting stuff under CITES rules, they had to purchase the permits every single time and fill out the paperwork every single time they sent one package to to one business.

Who wants to go through that??

If I were a business, I wouldn't want to. There is no profit in it.

But what CITES should be doing for Aquacultured coral exporters and re-exporters is to have them register with CITES, note each species of Coral they have in their Appendices they sell.

Lower the cost of the Permits. Have a one cost, one year permit to deal with say business to business for exporters and then business to person for re-export, with the customer in the other country who is purchasing the items, being responsible for buying the import permit for their country (If I were to save up and make a $500+ order, to pay a $65 one-time import permit would not bother me).
Then, as most businesses do, they organize their inventory to noterize how much they sold and normally to where. These businesses could then provide a year end, or quarterly spreadsheet showing so many of these aquacultured sps was exported to this country at such and such time of year.

In this top scenario, everyone wins. Aquaculter farmers get more business, CITES still gets money from the sale of permits (and would probably make more this way), and people in other countries can more easily get their hands on corals specifically bred and enhanced for home aquariums to be hardier, and we would keep more corals in our Oceans.

So overall, I think it is great that CITES are keeping tabs on what is being taken currently from our Oceans, but unless they change with the times a little bit and consider Aquacultured / Farmed corals in a seperate light (where most hobbyists I can imagine would prefer to purchase their corals), instead of perpetuating the sale of corals directly from the Ocean, which is ultimately allowing the continued deterioration of the reefs around the world, even if it is at a slow pace. They are defeating their own purpose.