He's now busy transplanting 50,000 pieces of coral from his nursery to the Florida Reef Tract, the world's third-largest coral reef ecosystem, which spans from the Dry Tortugas to Martin County. He hopes his aquaculture approach and do-whatever-it-takes mentality can alleviate at least some of the damage, both here and abroad.
"One of our passions would be to go into Southeast Asia and work with some of these coral exporters [on a nonprofit basis]," he says. "There's no reason why all these people who are harvesting and exporting wild corals couldn't be growing them. The writing is on the wall. There's going to be more and more restrictions on the harvest and trade of wild corals and more controversy. If I was in the business, I would be very worried."
Tim Grollimund
Ken Nedimyer of the Coral Restoration Foundation grows coral in an underwater nursery in Key Largo.
Tim Grollimund
Divers check on corals transplanted from a nursery to the Florida Reef Tract.
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Lunz and the federal agents working on the case of the seized coral examined the documents that had arrived with the shipment. Paperwork indicated that the coral had come from the Solomon Islands, an island nation in the South Pacific between Hawaii and Australia. There, the average person makes only $1,350 a year, and some local divers scrape together a living by pulling coral off nearby reefs.
Coral changes hands about five times between the ocean floor and a Florida tourist trap. Harvesters in the Pacific sell it to their local exporters, who pack up big shipments for sale to foreign markets. In the United States, there are a few scattered importers who buy these large shipments of coral skeletons. The importers in turn sell to wholesalers — again, there are just a few — who fashion coral into necklaces, lamps, and trinkets. From the wholesalers, coral makes its way to curio shops, jewelry stores, and design firms, where it is sold at retail prices.
Because coral is increasingly imperiled, the worldwide trade is supposed to be highly regulated. Shipments need to be properly marked and accompanied by permits as they move through ports around the world. The species that landed in front of Lunz were protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, more commonly known as CITES. This agreement gives stony coral the same protected status as the great white shark and the Bornean peacock pheasant — not yet endangered but close.
In countries that permit the export of coral, such as the Solomon Islands, scientists are supposed to determine whether coral harvesting will damage the species or the environment. If the all-clear is given, countries can issue permits to exporters, who are supposed to include with each shipment a detailed list of which species are being sold so authorities can monitor the populations. When a container of coral gets to the U.S., the regulatory burden shifts to customs and federal wildlife officials. They either trust the information on the permits or, when in doubt, call in experts like Lunz.
When Lunz encountered that initial shipment in the summer of 2010, authorities weren't sure if it was just an accident that half the goods had been mislabeled or whether there was criminal intent. But then over two years, at least four more shipments containing misidentified coral arrived in the U.S. — all from the same shipper — stoking suspicion and sparking the ongoing federal investigation.
This isn't the first time coral shipments have come under investigation. U.S. courts handed down their first felony conviction for illegal coral trafficking in 1999, to Petros Leventis, a Florida man who got 18 months in jail and two years' probation for importing coral from the Philippines, which had banned the sale of its coral decades ago. A U.S. law called the Lacey Act makes it illegal to handle wildlife collected in violation of other countries' laws.
In 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice prosecuted a German national for shipping 40 tons of coral from the Philippines to Portland, Oregon. In 2011, officials in Cebu, Philippines, confiscated 1.4 tons of poached coral bound for export. Weeks later, an additional 440 skeletons were seized in the same city.
One of the largest coral-smuggling cases is working its way through U.S. courts. In October 2011, a Virgin Islands-based company called GEM Manufacturing pleaded guilty to seven counts of smuggling black coral. GEM is the parent company of Bernard K. Passman, the world's premier supplier of black coral jewelry. Presidents and royal families have commissioned work from his company. He died several years ago, but his namesake company is still operating under GEM's umbrella, with boutiques in Las Vegas, Maui, and St. Thomas.
Investigators found that GEM ordered the slow-growing black coral from a Taiwanese couple. The orders were then forwarded to mainland China, where containers were packed, labeled as plasticware, and sent to St. Thomas, a U.S. territory. After being busted, GEM was ordered to hand over nearly 14,000 pounds of raw black coral — representing presumably millions of years of collective growth — and pay $4.5 million in fines.
Scientists like Lunz are worried that the global demand for coral — legal and illegal — is hastening the death of reefs around the world. "There are so many forces acting against coral reefs right now," she says. "For us to still be harvesting coral for the sake of having it on a bookshelf is outrageous at this point. It's just sad."
