it's a great/fair question Rob...
Indeed hobbyists and industry merchants alike have pondered the possibilities for years. I have sat through worksessions and on panels of "experts" (industry/hobby, academic and airline specialists through the years with various attempts to come up with some kind of protocol.
The essence of most such attempts has been to form a basic protocol that collectors could follow with even a few basic parameters to label each specimen with (depth, water clarity, lux, region... whatever)
But the bottom line is the same: the means for most collectors to actually do this (time, money, equipment) just isn't available for most.
And... to do any such thing takes 1) time (logging) and 2) money (administrative and hardware).
Any expense incurred to improve the quality of the product must likely be built into the final cost of the "product" (coral, fish, etc.)
And consumers of the world, but particularly American and English aquarists, have long demonstrated that they/we are VERY price conscious (read: cheap/frugal... overhearig a conversation in a pet store or from your wife, "That saltwater fish costs how much?!?!?!?"
)
Although the outspoken minority of enthusiastic/experienced aquarists/collectors on high profile message boards like RC here seem to be willing to pay for such extra service, the truth is that we/such hobbyists comprise an extremely small fraction of the market.
Our industry is driven by beginners (indeed underscored by the high turnover of aquarists at large entering and leaving the hobby every year).
And this fiscal majority will not (economically) support the increase in price for corals, fishes, etc to get collection information.
It has unsurprisingly played out this way in many other areas of the hobby thorough the years...
to this day, most aquarists balk at the higher price and smaller size of aquacultured fishes...
and... among wild fishes, most merchants still will not buy hand-caught fishes from better/further locales if they are more expensive when the same species is available for less from the Philippines, Indo, etc. They do this because customers demonstrate time and again that given to choose between a $30 blue regal tang from an unnamed locale and a $55 blue regal tang from Fiji, they will take the "same-looking" cheaper specimen almost every time.
Another example... QT fish. The overwhelming majority of aquarists (even savvy ones as we have in our RC community here) far and away will not pay the extra money to an LFS for fish that have been properly held in quarantine before resale. If you put a shop that sells yellow tangs out of the bag for $19, next to a shop that sells fabulously conditioned and 4+ week screened/QT tangs for $39... there is absolutely no question which LFS will sell more tangs.
We could go on...
But the good news is that frankly, even with such information (like water depth, lux readings, etc)... there are so many other factors that will influence coral growth or even assimilation in general to captivity.
There just is no way to standardize physical parameters from the many niches of a single reef, let alone the different oceans of the world from which we all pull specimens to make a collection.
Our corals will adapt and change as needed.
As for the (commonly) bleaching Montipora species... indeed too much light. If/when you dive and see them on a reef, they are generally no where even close to those fabulous Acros. Instead, they are in deeper, calmer waters. And they too often bleach wickedly under bright halides and shallow aquaria.
Those colorful montis are better started with diffused light. My fav technique is to put them in the tank (yes... MH lit and all) in the final place you want them from the start. But... cut some fiberglass flyscreen that is slightly large than the footprint of the new coral. Then place a stack (say a dozen sheets for bright tanks) in a rigged place over the water surface (under the lights) so as to cast a shadow on the new coral. You can then remove one sheet of screen every other day for the next three weeks to provide a very gentle acclimation of new corals to a new (captive) lighting scheme.
FWIW
kindly,
Anthony