A REEF KEEPER'S DILEMMA: HOW TO HAVE AWESOME CORAL IN YOUR TANK + BE A PART OF THEIR CONSERVATION/PRESERVATION

so let's get this straight right now...we're no angels!  in the beginning, i'm sure we bought wild-caught coral w/out even thinking about where the coral came from or whether or not it had a negative or positive impact on the environment and used products detrimental to coral growth/health, such as non-biodegradable sunscreen while frolicking in the ocean.  however, we've come to love this hobby and have thought to ourselves, "how can we help in the conservation/preservation of corals?"

as consumers, we should take it upon ourselves to use our buying power to let the coral farmers/coral exporters/retailers/travel agencies/excursion operators know we want to do what we can to conserve/preserve reefs in the wild:

1) buy only aqua-cultured or mari-cultured pieces from your LFS

2) buy only biodegradable sunscreen

3) don't buy jewelry or souvenirs made out of endangered black/red coral skeletons, unless it was legally harvested from an environment where the coral population is known to be plentiful + healthy

4) do research before you buy those wild-caught pieces!  that rare austrailian LPS you just bought could have been imported illegally b/c it's endangered, which makes you liable for the demise of the species!  know what's endangered + avoid the temptation to buy these pieces, which will send a message to retailers/exporters that harvesting/exporting/selling endangered coral is not OK!

5) join a local reef keeping club!  not only will you learn a thing or two from other people in the hobby, but lots of reef keepers frag their colonies + put the frags up for sale in the reef keeping forums.  by buying from other reef keepers you know that the coral is aqua-cultured and is tolerant to aquarium conditions.

i wish there was some sort of reef keeper's pen pal service where you could send a frag to, let's say fiji or the caribbean, and there would be a volunteer coral farmer or even a snorkeler/diver ready to receive the frag and would properly acclimate it to ocean water then plant it back on to some rocky outcrop to start a new, wild reef!  how cool would that be?  :)