[curtswearing]

WOW!!!

Talk about irresponsible reporting.

In February 2005, Borneman alerted the sanctuary staff that was barred from the commercial facility where the sanctuary specimens were held.

They made it sound like the Koch's were the bad guys here. They weren't. They were trying to return the corals (for which they had never been paid to house) to the sanctuary and Eric sued them to keep them in Houston. That lawsuit was immediately thrown out of court. However, if someone is suing me, I'm going to bar them from my business too.

“It's important to note that these were corals which would have been destroyed in the Truman Annex work if they had not rescued,” Heck said.

Yes, that's EXACTLY WHY THE NAVY WAS REQUIRED BY LAW to preserve them for replanting the sanctuary after the construction was done. The specimen's in their possession over 20cm were not allowed to leave the sanctuary. Eric was required by LAW (permit) to dive in the canal himself and take specimens. However, there were "logistical problems" that have never been defined and they said Eric could take smaller specimens out of the baskets. He wasn't supervised because they were out of town and when they got back, boy did they ever have egg on their face. Not only were specimens which they were responsible BY LAW to preserve, they were taken several states away and put into a facility that didn't have the ability to keep them in quarantine. They were mixed with Pacific species which means two things;

• They can never be used for coral disease research
• They can never be put back into the Sanctuary

Borneman came to the Keys and carried the 499 specimens to Texas. There were questions raised about the size of some specimens - species such as brain coral, mountain star coral and blushing star coral, among others - Borneman removed from a storage facility. Sanctuary staff concluded it could have been a verbal misunderstanding.

You better believe they are going to say that. The Sanctuary is the one who failed to protect the corals that they were responsible for. They aren't going to say, "I was out of town and I trusted a fish tank hobbiest not to violate the LAWS I was duty bound to adhere to".

To put this another way. XYZ is hired to protect Gold Bars and Platinum Bars. They are required by LAW to make sure that no Platinum bars leave the facility because it's extremely important that these Platinum bars are never kept anywhere but with the Gold Bars from the same cave. They aren't required by LAW to protecting the Gold Bars but they really like these things so they watch the Gold bars too. At the same time, a non-Federal or non-state employee has a permit to dig around in the caves where these metal bars were found. They were only allowed to collect Gold Bars. However, "for logistical reasons" that person doesn't go running around in the caves looking for them on his own. Instead, he asks the person (who has now gone out of town) if he can enter their facility to take some of their Gold Bars. While he was there and was NOT SUPERVISED, he decided to take a bunch of the Platinum Bars too.

Not only that, he took the previously quarantined Platinum Bars and Gold Bars and threw them into a big pot and decided to melt them all down with Aluminum Bars, Bronze Bars, Pig-Iron Bars, etc. Now the Platinum Bars as well as the Gold Bars are completely worthless. The people who allowed a hobbiest collector of Gold Bars into their facility are now in some serious Doo-Doo.

Borneman as affiliated with a committee of the federal Coral Reef Task Force, the sanctuary noted. “He presented a thorough and scientifically sound research proposal for the Truman Annex corals,” a summary noted.

Yeah, and then he put them into a big pot and melted them all together. If the staff had done their due diligence on this issue as well, they never would have allowed him to even go digging for his own Gold Bars.