Proper Collection on a ‘Perfect’ Stony Coral Reef

As soon as we landed in Mackay, Nic from Ultra Coral Australia took us on a dive through the last bit of a good weather window. He took us on a reef that he regularly visits to Harvest Acropora and similar stony corals.

Typical scenery of the few remaining healthy offshore reefs

First of all the place was out of this world, probably one of the best dive we’ve ever been to. But it’s not the point of this post.

The point of this post, is that if collection is done properly, it can be sustainable. Nic goes to the same reef, every few months, and get a boat load of over 500 acros in less than 3 hours of diving, all by himself. Then he can come there every few months and collect another load, without any visible damage for the reef.

Nic collecting a Piece of Acropora tenuis. Only one piec is collected out of this colony.

Because real estate is so expensive in this prime location, best exposed shallow reef parts of the Great Barrier reef, Acros, grow in layers, and are at the prime of coral competition. Removing a less exposed part of a colony, or an overgrowing part of another one, give a small edge to another colony, so this small, spread around collected pieces, have no impact on the reef overall health. Something else is responsible for reefs problems.

Note the front re-growing parts of this colony that was just collected a few weeks before, and is already growing back.

Note the left and right re-growing parts of this colony that was just collected a few weeks before, and is already growing back.

Note the re-growing parts of this colony that was just collected a few weeks before, and is already growing back.

These places are over a 120 km boat ride from the shore, and are only accessible when the weather is at its best, which is a natural limitation on how often they can be harvested. But the point is, not all reefs look like that, only very few very well positioned reef, are in this pristine state. These corals only grow on a certain part, a very small portion of these reefs. This is the only location where they receive the perfect conditions where they have evolved to grow in. 100 m away from this particular spot, and species composition changes. We will do some other post about the particular conditions where this Acros that everybody are looking for strive.

The classic Strawberry Short Cake, leaves in a very particular environment.

But these reefs are really rare and once they start to go down, like all the others due to climate change, bleaching, crown of thorns starfish, cyclone damage, then it becomes difficult to collect them properly. The point is, if wild coral collection is done properly, it’s not affecting the overall reef health.

Vincent Chalias

Vincent is a coral passionate aquarist with extensive experience in the industry, travelling the world to learn about corals. His background is a master degree in Marine Aquaculture. He set up the first Indonesian Coral mariculture farms at the beginning of the century and spent over 20 years in Indonesia running them. He's been extensively diving and documenting corals all over the Indo-Pacific.