Man Charged with smuggling Coral in Oregon

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Spot on observation Kurt!
I question most hard to believe news stories unless on NPR or the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer because they show both sides to most news.
 
The US department of justice charged them with shipping live coral. They identifed species. Im sure steve means well, but if they could actually identify corals, and they were bagged, thent his was not reactor media. Maybe thats their story, but thats not what happened. The US department of justice doesnt work off the hearsay of the media, they have actual facts which we are not privy too.

returnofsid said:
You might not be concerned with that news clip, but that's what this particular thread is about...lol. This particular situation is NOT about harvesting anything "living" from the ocean. It's dead coral skeletons of small sizes.
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I dont see why you guys want to protect him so bad. Obviously theres something illegal going on here. Why would this one shipment get singled out instead of the rest? If they get shipments of these all the time, I am sure they can tell the difference between dead coral and coral fragments. The DOJ launched an investigation after the first suspicious shipment, and I highly doubt they could have gone through an entire investigation and seized more shipments without ever having discerened the difference between coral fragments and dead coral skeletons.

CITES has a purpose. The supplier was clearly trying to get around it. It sounds to me like the real implication is that all of this "dead coral" was deliberatly killed to be harvested, or that they wre harvesting recently disturbed areas. Either one is just as bad as shipping 40 tons of live coral imho.
 
Not protecting him at all. As I said, he circumvented the law and imported mass quantities of live rock/base rock from the Philippines. Got busted for contraband and customs violation for such. Will pay a fine and be back in business just like the guys who import protected/threatened parrots and the like.
 
Herefishyfishy said:
Not protecting him at all. As I said, he circumvented the law and imported mass quantities of live rock/base rock from the Philippines. Got busted for contraband and customs violation for such. Will pay a fine and be back in business just like the guys who import protected/threatened parrots and the like.
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So true =(
 
I'm in no way protecting him and I agree that he broke the law and should be punished. My problem is how much this was originally distorted by the media. The first couple media articles made it sound like it was 40 tons of endangered live corals. There was even reports of the shipments being broke up and sent to public aquariums around the world to be "saved" so the corals wouldn't die.

These misleading news articles do a huge disservice to the hobby of reef keeping AND give more ammunition to those who would like to pass more strict laws pertaining to our hobby.
 
i think the dirty bag deserve lots and lots of jail time i just hate the idea of some one being iresonible andf the gov instead of protecting the corals will just let them die
 
Hoo RAw!

that one point for the red team! YAAA
that sux.. tho i wounder whats left behind when 40 tons of anything was harvested..
 
Not all of it was dead at the time of export is what they believe.

Either way the law is the law and you have to pay the price if you break it.

I know in my Arowana Hobby so many people import asian arowana's get caught and then just pay the $250.00 fine I have only seen one person really get nailed for it but that was because he was trying to smuggle in 30 fish at one time. he is serving 15 to 20 in FishKill Correctional, I believe he has about 8 1/2 years to go if he keeps his nose clean.

Yes that is the real name of the prison, makes me laugh you import fish and you go to Fishkill
 
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