New Coral Collection/Trade/Cites Publication

[BobFenner at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/23/00 10:47:55 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
gregorh at pacific.net.hk writes:

<< Subj:     Re: New Coral Collection/Trade/Cites Publication
 Date:  2/23/00 10:47:55 PM Pacific Standard Time
 From:  gregorh at pacific.net.hk (Gregor Hodgson)
 To:    BobFenner at aol.com

 File:  CORALBOO.doc (184320 bytes)
 DL Time (TCP/IP): < 1 minute

 Hi Bob,

 Thanks for alerting me to your nice site and the review of this paper. If 
you have
 not done so already, I would encourage you to publicize your review of the 
paper
 on the coral list server with a more complete citation of the location 
website and
 a slightly less critical statement to accompany it:
 http://www.wetwebmedia.com/WCMCRepRev.htm

 The reason I forwarded the citation is because I keep watching busy people
 reinvent the wheel and ignore the literature that is out there. After 
reading the
 paper, I also disagreed with many of it's conclusions (they distorted the
 conclusions of others on coral harvesting), however I came to a similar 
conclusion
 to you, that "there is no better source of information or assessment 
currently
 (available)" and while I have not been closely following this debate, I 
thought
 that others might benefit by reading it.

 For your info, I am one of those practical marine ecologists who feels that 
coral
 reefs are renewable resources, and if we don't use that value to figure out 
how to
 feed the "masses" then we are missing the boat. I was a US Peace Corps 
volunteer
 in the Philippines and Mike Ross was my partner. We both fought strongly 
against
 the coral export ban from the Philippines, but the academics won.

 The main point of Ross and Grigg's work was to show that both theoretically 
and in
 the field, stoney coral harvesting had no significant impact. As usual, the
 problem comes down to the management of the industry. I like what Paul 
Holthus and
 MAC are doing. I think that the future is going to be in aquaculture of all 
these
 animals and that will end the debate.

 Are you related to Doug Fenner?

 If you would like, please add a link to our Reef Check site to your site.

 You might also enjoy my chapter in Life and Death on Coral Reefs, where I 
discuss
 this need to allow and manage some level of resource extraction.

 Hodgson, G. (1997). Resource use: conflicts and management solutions. 
Chapter 17,
 p 386-410. In: C. Birkeland (ed) Life and Death of Coral Reefs, Chapman and 
Hall,
 New York, USA.

 Cheers,
 Greg
   >>
Outstanding response to my input. And thank you for your worthy suggestion. 
No relation to Doug Fenner (directly), down under, but have "spoken" with him 
regarding the coincidence of appellation.
    Will ask my friend, fellow web-siter Mike Kaechele to add your link to 
our "jump" area... on our site (www.wetwebmedia.com).
    And will post the "review" written for pet-fish/ornamental aquatics 
purposes to the listserv here at your prompting...
    Lastly, thank you for your involvement here, and in the broader sphere of 
resource management, education and inspiration... Will check out the citation 
above.
Bob Fenner