African Corals

[MinibowMatt]

I was wondering if anyone here has any info on where collecting is allowed in Africa? I cant seem to locate anything, and the CITES website is down. It was my understanding African reefs were not open to collecting, yet, african corals are beginning to show up in the trade.

Thanx!

[AfAqua]

I can put you in touch with someone in Kenya if you want. Mainly softies.

[MinibowMatt]

Thank you for the offer, I wasnt really looking for a supplier, mainly just wondering if collecting or aquaculture facilities are down there, and if they are exporting.

[AfAqua]

Okay, South Africa is extremely strictly controlled with wild collection of rock and coral for commercial purposes outlawed. Collection of hard coral for personal use is also not allowed, and the regs around softies is a bit grey. Fish may be collected for personal use but is subject to permits and bag limits.

Aquaculture is growing on a private scale, although it's very difficult (read impossible) to set up a licenced/ legal commercial prop operation as the government introduced to "Biodiversity Act" which is in place to prevent the possible invasion of alien species.

Moving north to Mozambique. A stunningly simple country with amazing reefs and marine resources, particularly the further north you go. Someone did try a lagoon based prop operation at Inhambane some years back, but found the "taxes" too exorbitant to make this viable. To my knowledge there are no commercial collectors there at present.

Kenya is the most prominent player, with a number of legal commercial collectors of fish, coral and rock.

I'd guess that 80% of the rock distributed in SA is claimed to come from Kenya, although there are constant allegations of local collection which gets the SA reefkeeping majority all steamed up.

Hope this goes some way to answering your questions, but pose specifics if you want.

[MinibowMatt]

No, that is great. Is there any links to the regs? Im specifically interested to know if Zoanthids are being exported. It sounds like they fall into the "grey area".
Im gonna dig around for info on Kenya.

[AfAqua]

I doubt this could be legally done from SA, and have never seen any African zoos that come even close to those you guys get.

I've got the regs in electronic format somewhere (I fought the system some time back) and could mail them to you if you like. Will also try to find a link.

[MinibowMatt]

thanx. I will PM you my email..

[AfAqua]

So that was easier than I thought, check out Chapter 5, Part 1 regarding alien species, and Chapter 6 wrt to the export of indidenous species.

http://www.mcm-deat.gov.za/regulatory/bio.html

Shout if you want more info or find anything interesting.