live rock impact and fiji

[Fishdude1984]

i have noticed as most of you most likely have also, that most live rock seems to come from Fiji. why is this? and what is the environmental impact of that? is it going to strip Fiji's reefs bare? or is there a lot of aquaculture going on? just a thought, maybe someone out there knows about this?

[TIMMYE]

There was post a by Walt Smith not long ago on this. To sume it up they, they do a couple of things. They seed the ocean with man made rock that becomes live rock, and it basically sounded as what they take out they put back in. HTH

[jakleen]

i like walt smith and i saw his presentation at macna 2005 and he is doing aquacultured live rock in fiji . he does good job lessening the impact of the natural live rock removal from the oceans,so i try to support him. he is also a very nice and generous man. good luck. jakleen

[TypicalNoah]

OK - I feel somewhat qualified to post because my summer research mentor from Georgia Tech just did a presentation on coral reef research in Fiji for the Atlanta Reef Club. One of the research projects he's collaborating on (and a minor one, as he's a biologist and not an aquaculturist) is a study of the effects of live rock collection and production. Mainly, he introduced the idea, and explained how Walt Smith's work in LR aquaculture; they'd met and discussed such research several times in Fiji. Walt Smith makes (concrete?) "donuts" and strings them on heavy line on the Fiji reef flats. In under a year, the planted live rock is harvested. This system does not affect the net growth of the reef; foreign rock is merely added and removed, and the reef flat provides the living growing habitat necessary for the colonization.

What I remember most about this presentation was not my mentor's work, for he is only slightly augmenting the more impressive research he showed us that came directly from Walt Smith. Walt has done social research on the Fiji islanders' communities too, producing numbers for impacts of live rock production and harvesting and their importance to the Fijian economy, also demonstrating that without LR, Fijians would shift their commercial operations to fishing - which, though I shouldn't have to say it, is an already stressed industry.

Anyways, I regret not going to the site and pulling out the data for you, but I'm sure you can find it all on www.waltsmith.com. Check it out; it feels good to read about responsible aquarium products and aquaculture.

[loosecannon]

OK i read in one of my books what the hobby taks in a year thay take out for biulding in a N.Y. minute! I like Walt Smith to I got 50 lbs. from him and 60 lbs. from E tropical.

[Limpit]

I and my cousin witnessed Walt's Fiji operation in person earlier this year. Most of what we saw (but not all) of the live rock was the aquacultured rock. The aquacultured rock is very labor intensive (but labor is cheap in Fiji) and lessens the impact of the natural rock. We saw mounds of aquacultured rock in one reef area off the coast of Lautoka and then the cable tied "donut" rock off the coral coast. At least they are trying to lessen the impact of natural live rock collection there.
Here are a couple of the pics I took of the aquacultured rock where it is made in Lautoka.


These are crates of the aquaculture rock waiting to go out to sea for culturing.


This is one of the long tables where the rock is made. They also make coral frag plugs the same way as the cultured rock.

The workers must have thought we were pretty strange getting excited over rock!

[TypicalNoah]

WOW that's so awesome!

I've seen pictures like those before but it's really cool that you were there taking them. How did it come about that you got the chance to see the operation in action? Dive vacation?

[markglad]

This is interesting the rock looks natural, have any close up pictures?