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justasfastasican
04/05/2004, 11:58 AM
I am planning a trip to Florida in May and I will be flying. i would like to collect or buy some small zoos and bring them home. Forgive me for being dumb is this possible, legal?

reef-man_d-man
04/05/2004, 12:34 PM
100% illegal if you get caught its jail time

PRC
04/05/2004, 02:39 PM
You'll need a nonresident saltwater fishing license to collect. As far as bringing it back on the plane I'd check with the airline first.
With the zo's you're only allowed to take a very small piece of rock around the animal and they will check. If they catch you with any live rock you'll get fined and lose your gear at a minimum.
http://myfwc.com/marine/recreational/recharvestmls.htm

Aquabucket
04/06/2004, 08:24 AM
PRC is correct. Frag the zoos so they have as little rock on them as possible.

I recommend Kordon's Breathing bags for transport. These bags allow oxygen in and co2 out and can be completely filled with water. If you can get the zoos to your destination in less than 48 hours you might have good results.

Keeping a steady temp is really important. I would carry on the zoos in a small cooler with you when you fly. You could put some apples and stuff in there and make them look like a snack.

justasfastasican
04/06/2004, 09:53 AM
Thanks for the replys and the links I will look into it further.

justasfastasican
04/06/2004, 09:55 AM
And if I just buy some stuff...?

PRC
04/06/2004, 12:11 PM
Where are you going in FL? If it's south FL you'd probably do just as well to to buy things in Austin in my opinion. There aren't really any shops down here that'd make it worth carrying stuff all the back to TX IMO.

justasfastasican
04/07/2004, 10:41 AM
PRC is there anything nice around the keys, maybe some hermits or pretty zoos? In Austin we pay 3.00-12.00 for hermits and 3.00 to 4.00 for snails, a fist size rock of zoos is between 55.00-75.00.

PRC
04/07/2004, 01:40 PM
Colecting hermits and snails is fairly easy. Most bridge structures are an easy, decent place to try. Zoo's are another story.
As far as shops go there's a collector down in the keys http://www.reeftopia.com/index.htm that sells stuff online. I'm not sure if they sell out of a shop as well. I've never bought anything from them but they seem to have some pretty decent prices on local stuff.

SillyLikeThat
04/23/2004, 04:25 PM
let me know where you are going, im in west palm beach. if you want i can take you to some of my secret zoo spots..you cant have more than 1/2 a square inch of rock and have to have a saltwater fishing liscence

Scuba_Dave
04/26/2004, 01:41 PM
Originally posted by reef-man_d-man
100% illegal if you get caught its jail time

100% illegal to buy zoo's in Florida & bring them home...no.

100% illegal to just collect them & bring them home...Yes

You need a license to collect & they are strict.

We had a friend find some blue zoo's in an LFS in Florida & bought 6-7 frags & brought them back

zily
04/27/2004, 03:51 PM
wow i thought it was a lot more strict than that. I thought you needed a special license, but i guess all you need is a fishing license, and some good taxonomy skills.

I've wondered that question for a while-- but i live in texas and even if it were legal, it wouldn't be feasible. With my luck, I would probably just find a bunch of crap :rolleyes:

reef-man,

why did you say it was 100% illegal? were you referring to collecting, or transporting?


oh, on the equipment list, do they not allow chisels? Or are they referring just for things to catch fish?

redFishblue
04/27/2004, 04:25 PM
Sounds like its more trouble than its worth. A few years back on Guam, some navy guys collected a truck load of live rock and a bunch of corals. Got caught and were up to their necks in trouble. Mess with the law and the law won.

PRC
04/28/2004, 09:56 AM
As mentioned previously, these are the rules for the state of Florida according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission http://myfwc.com/marine/recreational/recharvestmls.htm .
If I had any questions regarding the rules on that site I would contact them directly. The local authorities are quite serious about enforcing these regulations and a lack of understanding is rarely accepted as an excuse. Also the penalties can be quite severe.

Zily, the laws in Texas are very likely different from those of Florida. Again, I would strongly urge you to contact the proper local authorities to find out what the regulations are in Texas.

jkta99
04/28/2004, 10:13 AM
Why not just Fedex them overnight home that way you won't have to worry about getting caught with anything?

zily
04/28/2004, 03:32 PM
oh, I meant the whole collecting in florida and transporting back to houston, which i guess is illegal.

Don't worry about me:D :D

tcarlson
04/28/2004, 04:08 PM
You Texans would be surprised that there are a lot of things to collect in and around the Galveston/South Houston Area. We (MARSH) just had a collecting trip at the TX City Dike were we collected tons of Porcelain Crabs, Ghost Shrimp, Puffers, Reef Safe Algae Eating snails, and various other things. We'll be going to Galveston in May to collect Molly Miller Blennies, Violet Gobies, Pepermint Shrimp, Kling Fish, Pipe Fish and more. Check out www.marshreef.com if you have not already.
Tom