On the latest Survivor, one of the characters on the show got to go snorkleing near the Great Barrier Reef. When s/he (trying to avoid spoilers) did, s/he broke off a bunch of chunks of coral as souveneirs for the other people.
I thought that The Great Barrier Reef was protected from this sort of vandalism…somehow this strikes me as going into Carlsbad and snapping off a few stalagtites.
A) Is the Great Barrier Reef protected from this sort of thing, legally?
B) Aren’t there pretty stringent import restrictions to the USA on Coral?
The majority of the reef is protected as part of the GBR World Heritage Area and/or the GBR Marine Park. The marine park is comprised thousands of different small parks over different reef areas. There are however some smaller sections of reef, particlularly in southern areas, that are not protected by either National Park or World Heritage status. Removing non-protected invertebrates from these areas is legal if somewhat tasteless.
Taking the coral back to the States shouldn’t present a big problem. There are various businesses in Qld. that will happily autoclave specimens for a price, hermetically seal them, and provide you with a nice little certificate that says they meet certain quarantine and customs standards. Simple enough if you’ve got the money.
Yeah, snapping coral off the reef is fairly small minded, however it’s not quite as bad as snapping a stalagtite off a cave roof. Coral comes and goes anyway and is frequently damaged by cyclones, predators ets. Provided that too many people don’t try it the reef will recover fairly rapidly. Far faster than a stalactite formation.
I didn’t get the impression that he removed the coral from the reef. I don’t remember seeing him break of pieces of coral.
As far as I know coral breaks off on its own sometimes and wash to the shore. They did show a scene were Jerri was collecting shells and things.
Besides, some of the things he gave out looked old. The piece with a hole in it he gave Keith didn’t look like fresh coral to me. It looked like it had floated around awhile.
Man, I was going to ask the same question over on the Jerry is gone thread in IMHO until I saw yours. I guess greatminds think a like huh. I like the camparison about the caverns too.
Nope, they’re made of rock not mud. If they’re still “living” (aka growing/active/etc) they’re like damp, slightly gritty rock, if they’re not “living” they’re very rock-like. Smooth to the touch (Carlsbad has one formation that it allows you to touch, since skin oils can “kill” a formation)
I like the camparison about the caverns too.