coral transportation

[trumper]

Attn to Eric Borneman

Dear Sir,

I am a commercial coral and aquarium fish collector operating in the Great Barrier Reef Australia.

We have been shipping corals now for about 15 years and have tried and continue to try various methods for packing corals. I agree that corals packed in too much water lead to higher loss rates.

Our preferred method now is to wrap corals in butchers paper (large plain white sheets) , dunk them in salt water and put them in a sealed plastic bag with a small amount of water and plenty of air ( or pure oxygen for longer trips). We put up to 20 coral pieces per bag. Coming from the tropics we put 2 small 500 gram blocks of ice wrapped in plenty of newspaper for insulation. This means the ice thaws slowly and keeps the stock uniformly cool during transit

We have found the corals arrive in excellent condition with almost no losses or damage.

Also in your article you made mention of a coral exporter from Fiji - "Waterlife Exports". Is Peter Savona still the owner of that business? I dived with him many years ago when he first started.

Best regards

[EricHugo]

He was as of last year.

Glad to hear corrobaratorry stories from you and keep it up! I will pass this along to some of the others I am working with and try your method, as well and add it to the hopefully increasing data set.

[EricHugo]

by the way...what kind of transit times are you working with using the butcher paper?

[RCS]

I'm curious if you've noticed better/worse success rates depending on the type of paper used to wrap the corals? I've seen corals shipped in mostly in newspaper (I would guess due to their availability), but since one of the important factors seems to be breathability, I wonder if there are better options at a reasonable cost.

[trumper]

Eric,

Transit times are domestic only. We are not allowed to export corals yet from Australia (that may change in the future). Overnight road transport up to 18 hours is about the longest.

The biggest issue with collecting, holding and transporting wild acros is colours fading to browns. Do you have any thoughts on this issue? We hold the acros we collect under skylights, under flouros, and under metal halides and the result is always the same - fade to brown (sounds like a song title)

New growth down the track sees the colours return, but it does not stop people being disappointed with their new brown acro!

[trumper]

Fred,

We used to wrap in newspaper, but we changed to butchers paper and noticed an improvement. If you rub your fingers firmly on newspaper and see the amount of ink that rubs off on your finger ... It just did not seem worth the risk - I certainly don't know what chemicals are in the ink and the damage they may cause.

When we dunk the wrapped coral and then pull it out, water drains rapidly. That would indicate to me that water would move readily in and out of a wrapped piece with plenty of oxygen exchange taking place.

[SaltwaterDaddy]

Great article Eric. I'm willing to try it out. I just have one question. The acclimation process you used? Thanks.

[dgasmd]

Interesting article. After reading this same thing in some books years back I always wondered how come more people don't do this, especially the traders and sellers in the US. That was until I bought some frags from an RC member of the name Mustang. Maybe the only reason I remember his RC name is because I was so mad at this guy when I placed an order of some frags. I go get the box for a good 18+ frags and get this tiny little box with this little bags with frags wrapped in wet paper towel. I cursed the guy so bad for being a cheap bas.... and so on and not shipping the frags on water (ignorance in my part Mustang!). However, every frag but one made it just fine and later on developed into larger gorgeous colonies. To date, he has been the only one in the hobby that I have seen or had first hand experience with that used this shipping method. Maybe he can elaborate some more about it.

Just to note, a few months ago I got some frags again from Mustang and relayed the story to him. He laughed. To my surprise, the frags he sent were is a little bit of water though the second time around. I never asked why.

[dgasmd]

Forgot to add a question above. It is my understanding, and judging from Paletta's article in RDO from last month, that most of the corals in the trade do not come from areas like the ones in the pictures in the article that are exposes daily to the many elements you described. It is my understanding they come mostly from 10-30 ft. depth. So, are the one colonies occupying the top flat spots exposed with tides a form of self selection to those places where they are able to survive rather than that being an example of what any and all variety of elements they are able to thrive in? I am sure the acroporas sp. (for example) found on those places are also found on other areas of the reef, but certainly not to the same degree of dominance. Likely the same for other acropora sp. found at 30 ft. depth.

That still does not take away the merit of the damp shipping method discussed in the article. It may however explain why maybe some collectors still do it the way they do it.

[EricHugo]

Trumper:

Thanks for the information , and I agree about newsprint. Additionally, it seems to fall apart too easily.

Saltwater Daddy: I answered this in a thread in The Coral Forum

dgasmd: Mustang's been around awhile

On Paletta's article, I didn't read it but saw how ironically they had an article on the same subject....hmmm. Anyway, I'm not sure if Mike even dives, does he? In any case, none of the corals talked about in the shipping trials were from intertidal areas either - all submerged. In any case, the reason I mention the intertidal corals in the article is twofold: to show the daily exposure with NO protection or mositure or salinity or temperature control for extendied periods and to show how durable they are. That said, many of the corals in that article are not only intertidal and are frequently subtidal. Finally, I think Paletta is entirely wrong if he thinks corals come mostly from 10-30 feet in depth, and I can say that with some assurity if you look back at my earlier article called "Do you Know where your corals are coming from" in AA where we did surveys for over a week with coral collectors, and I have been out with other collectors from the Caribbean to Fiji to Indonesia to Palau and they go wherever it takes to get the species ordered and that means from under a dock to wading depth to 150 feet.

[dgasmd]

Originally posted by EricHugo
Anyway, I'm not sure if Mike even dives, does he?

I don't know if he does and neither do I for that matter.

Originally posted by EricHugo
Finally, I think Paletta is entirely wrong if he thinks corals come mostly from 10-30 feet in depth, and I can say that with some assurity if you look back at my earlier article called "Do you Know where your corals are coming from" in AA where we did surveys for over a week with coral collectors, and I have been out with other collectors from the Caribbean to Fiji to Indonesia to Palau and they go wherever it takes to get the species ordered and that means from under a dock to wading depth to 150 feet.

In all fairness to Paletta, I did mention the article smply because I read it recently. To be honest, I am not sure if he even mentioned the depth as a fact or if it was mentioned at all. More than likely it was an assumption on my part based on my readings. Also, I was refering mostly to acropora sp. Maybe the assumption that the rudimentary methods collectors use from coral collection (free diving wth a hand chisel/screwdriver) dictates it would 50 times easier to get corals from 10-30 ft. than it would be from deeper water. Maybe it was a misplaced assumption nevertheless.

I will go back and loo at the article you mentioned. Thanks for the respose