Dealing in coral

[HCB66]

Hi

I'm going to get a sail boat and live on the sea cruising. Among the ideas I've had for income is supplying coral and other organisms to hobbyests, researchers etc. It's occurred to me that I can probably culture these on the sea floor, create reefs using limestone accretion with electricity to foster growth. Should I be successful in farming these organisms I'm wondering where to sell them and what  is most in demand ? The more expensive it is the better as sail boats are generally small and I need to think about cargo space. 

[Clown79]

You would need first to look into legalities surrounding the business.

 

There are laws in collection of aquatic life, even water and sand,  areas where collection is strictly prohibited, limitations on what can be collected.

 

Then you need to look into export/import laws. 

 

Many hobbyists are leaning towards purchasing fish/rock/corals not farmed from the sea but rather fragged from a long living tank raised mother colony as it's far better for reef survival and environment.

 

 

 

 

[HCB66]

Ya there's a lot of problems with bureaucracy etc. That's why I'm headed out to sea in the first place. Last free place on earth where you do what you want, saw some glass sponge growing on a sea mount in a video, that looked really pretty could be worth growing if I had buyers. Most sea mounts are unexplored in fact I imagine a person could farm one if they could find a way to do it. With robots I guess since it's too far down for diving. Just some ideas. 

 

[HCB66]

Here's what really goes on out there in the ocean in terms of what you can touch and what you can't. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35106631

[A.m.P]

34 minutes ago, HCB66 said:

Here's what really goes on out there in the ocean in terms of what you can touch and what you can't. 

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35106631

Ah yes, because others are actively destroying things with an "it's just me, what harm can it do" attitude means we all should. After-all every. single. one of us personally knows what's best, especially when we go somewhere to ask questions, just as a formality of course.

If you want to start a farm get in touch with the localities you'll be nearby because you're NOT going to just be drifting at sea, free, that isn't how it works; once you do that get in touch with locals who are actively-involved in mariculture, maybe intern or get a job there for a bit to learn successful-methods and then attempt it yourself.

 

If you're looking for people who are going to be outward and warm towards that kind of "do what I want" mentality, there are allot of importers, marine-biologists, and aqua-culturers on these forums who are being VERY personally-affected and are INTIMATELY aware of exactly what that mentality means for the environment. 
(I can recommend a few dozen books if you'd like to learn just how great a-historical-libertarian practices have been to this planet and humankind throughout history)

-Some dumb "other-triber" who studied environmental engineering and lived their entire life near the ocean and some of these reefs.

[HCB66]

I bet Sea Shepard will be going after the Chinese any day now. I think I'll e mail them that article. 

[jservedio]

Excellent plan! Swashbuckling on the high seas, exploring sea mounts, well out of the jurisdiction of those corrupt FBI agents, and plucking animals you haven't the slightest clue about out of the sea to support yourself.

 

What could possibly go wrong? I'm sure you will receive nothing but praise and support around here...

[mitten_reef]

> Sail boat - cool

> living on the high sea - cool

> collecting critters that are little known about and remove them from natural habitat - 👎👎 

> If you’re going to truly mariculture something - anything, I’d imagine you’ll need port of call to do your business.  in which case, you need to understand legalities of those places as others had already mentioned.  

 

Your idea deal is interesting, but it’s half-baked at the moment - just need to flesh out the actual logical steps a bit more. 

[Tired]

To ship corals to any country, you're going to need to know whether or not you're in that country. Very likely you won't be able to mail corals from one country to another. I'm fairly sure post offices don't take "middle of the ocean" as an address, and import laws are going to be an issue, unless you stay legally within a country. If you stay within a country, you're bound by that country's laws. 

 

You're also going to have to figure out how to keep those creatures alive when they're in stock. You can't just say "oh, I have this out in the ocean", you have to actually have it in a tank somewhere that you can easily pick it up and sell it. Not to mention quarantining. Otherwise something might keep you from harvesting it, or something might eat it. And how are you going to ship them to people? Are you going to sail back to land somewhere every few days to put out an order? Where are you going to keep the boxes and insulating packs? 

 

For that matter, where are you getting food? You can't live off fish, it will NOT go well for you. Fresh water? Medical supplies? Are you going to always be in the range of internet to check your website? How are you powering whatever electronic device you check it with? What happens to your livelihood if a storm wrecks your mariculture area? What if a trawler comes through and dredges it all up? Are you really sure you want to spend all day, every day, getting covered in salt with no showers? 

 

Also, those laws about what you can and can't harvest aren't meaningless rules meant to stifle free spirits. They're made by people trying to protect the environment. You CANNOT, in fact, just go and harvest whatever you want. You also should not. 

 

Frankly, I'd think you'd be better off finding an uninhabited tropical island somewhere, one that's already been ecologically wrecked by pigs, rats, or both, and setting up there. Not for corals, you'd need a lot of expertise to do that right. Maybe grow bamboo or tropical fruits, or make art, or hunt invasive pigs and sell smoked meats online. Or, if you just want to avoid laws, move to Alaska or Canada. Somewhere really remote. Go live in a cabin somewhere, grow your own food in a greenhouse and/or in cows. Don't have to talk to anybody for months if you don't want to, and you've got a stationary house, less at the mercy of storms, with such lovely things as running water, heating, and Not Moving Around. 

 

(oh, and check whether or not you get seasick.)

[Clown79]

2 hours ago, Tired said:

To ship corals to any country, you're going to need to know whether or not you're in that country. Very likely you won't be able to mail corals from one country to another. I'm fairly sure post offices don't take "middle of the ocean" as an address, and import laws are going to be an issue, unless you stay legally within a country. If you stay within a country, you're bound by that country's laws. 

 

You're also going to have to figure out how to keep those creatures alive when they're in stock. You can't just say "oh, I have this out in the ocean", you have to actually have it in a tank somewhere that you can easily pick it up and sell it. Not to mention quarantining. Otherwise something might keep you from harvesting it, or something might eat it. And how are you going to ship them to people? Are you going to sail back to land somewhere every few days to put out an order? Where are you going to keep the boxes and insulating packs? 

 

For that matter, where are you getting food? You can't live off fish, it will NOT go well for you. Fresh water? Medical supplies? Are you going to always be in the range of internet to check your website? How are you powering whatever electronic device you check it with? What happens to your livelihood if a storm wrecks your mariculture area? What if a trawler comes through and dredges it all up? Are you really sure you want to spend all day, every day, getting covered in salt with no showers? 

 

Also, those laws about what you can and can't harvest aren't meaningless rules meant to stifle free spirits. They're made by people trying to protect the environment. You CANNOT, in fact, just go and harvest whatever you want. You also should not. 

 

Frankly, I'd think you'd be better off finding an uninhabited tropical island somewhere, one that's already been ecologically wrecked by pigs, rats, or both, and setting up there. Not for corals, you'd need a lot of expertise to do that right. Maybe grow bamboo or tropical fruits, or make art, or hunt invasive pigs and sell smoked meats online. Or, if you just want to avoid laws, move to Alaska or Canada. Somewhere really remote. Go live in a cabin somewhere, grow your own food in a greenhouse and/or in cows. Don't have to talk to anybody for months if you don't want to, and you've got a stationary house, less at the mercy of storms, with such lovely things as running water, heating, and Not Moving Around. 

 

(oh, and check whether or not you get seasick.)

Um, Canada has some pretty tough laws. 

We aren't that remote.

The remote areas of Canada are not easy or friendly. 

[HCB66]

Some good advice coming through here. Hooking up with locals, I like that idea. I think I'd like some of the Polynesian cultures out there and enjoy working for some kind of sea farming operation.  I'm thinking more in terms of things like gem stones such as you get from red coral. If I found a way to keep coral alive and it was profitable to do so I might try that to. Or, I might not do anything at all, I might come up with some other kind of plan all together. Just remember a lot of environmentalism is driven by multi billionaires with an agenda not grass roots people bitten by pollution or habitat destruction. Greta Thunberg is a prime example of this. A way to get that carbon market up and running and stuff their pockets. Given this I'm pretty much an enviroskeptic in fact very much so. 

[Tired]

AH, yes, of course. It's all a scam. There's no climate change, the reefs aren't dying, fish stocks and insect populations aren't plummeting all over the world. It's all faked. So we'll spend money on, let me check my notes, what was it? Oh yeah, sustainability. 

 

You know storms have always happened, right? Whether or not you're an "enviroskeptic", there are lots of storms in the ocean. More so lately.

 

If your plan is to grow coral just to kill it, this isn't the right forum for you. This is a forum for the opposite of that. 

[Clown79]

Lmao.

 

It still amazes me that ppl are skeptical (more so ignorant) of the environmental issues we are having when there are facts to prove it.

 

 billionaires and their businesses are one of the reasons we are having environmental issues...just like gem stones from coral(you gotta kill the coral to make the gemstones)

 

 

1 hour ago, HCB66 said:

Some good advice coming through here. Hooking up with locals, I like that idea. I think I'd like some of the Polynesian cultures out there and enjoy working for some kind of sea farming operation.  I'm thinking more in terms of things like gem stones such as you get from red coral. If I found a way to keep coral alive and it was profitable to do so I might try that to. Or, I might not do anything at all, I might come up with some other kind of plan all together. Just remember a lot of environmentalism is driven by multi billionaires with an agenda not grass roots people bitten by pollution or habitat destruction. Greta Thunberg is a prime example of this. A way to get that carbon market up and running and stuff their pockets. Given this I'm pretty much an enviroskeptic in fact very much so. 

 

[HCB66]

LOL Jesus Christ people are upset about killing a coral that I grew. It's a coral, brainless like a house plant. 

[HCB66]

Here's the deal, sustainability isn't just for environmentalists, it makes sense for capitalists too otherwise where would my money come from if there was nothing left to sell? True in the past there were great environmental abuses but that wasn't real capitalism. 

[Clown79]

34 minutes ago, HCB66 said:

LOL Jesus Christ people are upset about killing a coral that I grew. It's a coral, brainless like a house plant. 

They are living animals.

 

Your comments shows what you know.

 

I think a forum where people actually love the ocean and work hard to keep these animals alive is not the forum for you 

 

 

[Tired]

...you don't know what capitalism is, do you? It's not necessarily something that's good for anyone. Oil companies have been hiding the truth about their emissions and the effects thereof for 50 years. There are people who couldn't care less if the next generation is completely screwed, so long as they die rich. Yes, it's good to do sustainable things so we don't screw each other over, but it's often more expensive (i.e. properly disposing of waste instead of dumping it somewhere), so a lot of people don't do it.

 

Here's the dictionary definition of capitalism, from Oxford. "An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." 

I see nothing in there about environmental abuse not being real capitalism. 

 

As for the coral, I have no moral objections to killing coral for gemstones, or at least the basic idea of it. They don't have brains. They're capable of suffering and distress to some extent, as are plants, but they aren't the most aware things. I do, however, object to killing it when the oceans are so very much in trouble. The ecosystem needs every scrap of reef it can get, including artificial reef. If you want to sustainably harvest coral for gemstone purposes (as some places do), it's going to be in tiny amounts. An inch off the tips of certain colonies every year. 

 

And, again, this is a forum where people talk about how to grow coral. Not how to profit off it and kill it. 

[Clown79]

1 hour ago, Tired said:

...you don't know what capitalism is, do you? It's not necessarily something that's good for anyone. Oil companies have been hiding the truth about their emissions and the effects thereof for 50 years. There are people who couldn't care less if the next generation is completely screwed, so long as they die rich. Yes, it's good to do sustainable things so we don't screw each other over, but it's often more expensive (i.e. properly disposing of waste instead of dumping it somewhere), so a lot of people don't do it.

 

Here's the dictionary definition of capitalism, from Oxford. "An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." 

I see nothing in there about environmental abuse not being real capitalism. 

 

As for the coral, I have no moral objections to killing coral for gemstones, or at least the basic idea of it. They don't have brains. They're capable of suffering and distress to some extent, as are plants, but they aren't the most aware things. I do, however, object to killing it when the oceans are so very much in trouble. The ecosystem needs every scrap of reef it can get, including artificial reef. If you want to sustainably harvest coral for gemstone purposes (as some places do), it's going to be in tiny amounts. An inch off the tips of certain colonies every year. 

 

And, again, this is a forum where people talk about how to grow coral. Not how to profit off it and kill it. 

A++++

[Lognor]

I feel like we're being trolled hard by our future pirate.  7 posts, all on this thread today...

[Clown79]

1 hour ago, Lognor said:

I feel like we're being trolled hard by our future pirate.  7 posts, all on this thread today...

I agree.