Imagine the surprise of live rock farmer Neal Novak when he boated out to his Islamorada aquaculture site to discover only 10% of his more than 300,000 pounds of rock remained at the site where he was farming live rock. Mr. Novak is a boat captain from Miami who aspired to become a live rock farmer and now it appears that the more than $100,000 he has invested in the Keys live rock operation has literally been stolen from the ocean floor. But how do you lose track of 150 tons of rock? Mr. Novak has been caring for his parents for the past year and a half since he last checked the site but he was crushed to find that somone had stolen his livelihood with live rock having a street value between 1.5-2 million dollars. It’s incredible to imagine that someone could have collected so much rock from the site over multiple trips without ever being noticed but one thing is for sure: selling off that much rock will leave some kind of a trace. If you know of anyone in Southern Florida posessing or selling an unusually large amount of Florida live rock (who isn’t a live rock farmer), please contact the Florida Fish and Wildlife Comission. We feel for Mr. Novak and we hope that they catch the lowlifes who stole his rock.
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