[Coral-List] News on Corallidae precious coral fishery management

[Georgios Tsounis]

Dear all,

you might remember some discussion on this list in February 2010 regarding the question whether Corallidae harvested for use in jewelry should be protected through CITES or through local management.

In the end, the US & EU proposal did not reach absolute majority during CITES CoP 15, in large part based on the hope that local management would be a better alternative. In general, these are data poor species found in a variety of habitats, hence the complexities and contradicitions in management.

So for those interested in how this topic is evolving, I thought I might post some references of recent papers. The first is by our esteemed colleagues in Japan and presents an interesting case of a well functioning coral fishery management system, while in the second paper we show that illegal harvest is hindering efficient Mediterranean coral fishery management. For some background info to precious coral fishery management, there are the pioneering papers of Richard Grigg on the Hawaiian black coral fishery (3). And (4) there are some more data available on growth rates on Pacific Corallidae that will help management:

1) Chang, S.K., Yang, Y.C. and Iwasaki, N., 2013
Whether to employ trade controls or fisheries management to conserve precious corals (Coralliidae) in the Northern Pacific Ocean
Marine Policy 39, 144-153
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X12001960

2) Georgios Tsounis, Sergio Rossi, Lorenzo Bramanti, Giovanni Santangelo
Management hurdles for sustainable harvesting of Corallium rubrum, 
Marine Policy, Volume 39, May 2013, Pages 361-364
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X12002515)

3) Richard Grigg. 2010. The Precious Corals. Fishery Management Plan of the Western Pacific Regional. Fishery Management Council. No. 1, January
http://www.wpcouncil.org/library/docs/precious_corals_monograph.pdf

4) Shui-Kai Chang, Ya-Ching Yang, Nozomu Iwasaki, Whether to employ trade controls or fisheries management to conserve precious corals (Coralliidae) in the Northern Pacific Ocean, Marine Policy, Volume 39, May 2013, Pages 144-153
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X12001960

I hope you will find these interesting, especially in light of very recent discussions on coral conservation… If you have any questions, shoot away!

All the best,
Georgios


Dr. Georgios Tsounis
Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Ecology (ZMT) GmbH
Fahrenheitstrasse 6
D - 28359 Bremen
Germany

Tel : +49-421-23800-67
Fax : +49-421-23800-30
Email: georgios.tsounis at zmt-bremen.de
web : www.zmt-bremen.de