DaveK: I have seen numerous aquariums set up by the sea shore using NSW. Animals were collected from a variety of locations and placed in captivity.
None of the tanks I saw were managed by aquarists that understood the bio-tope approach to aquarium keeping.
E.g. Animals from one part of the reef were kept with animals from other parts of the reef. Their captivity was unnatural as natural predators were kept with natural victims.
Filtration and lighting was not an issue as the animals started competing for living space almost immediately. There was no understanding of animal husbandry or compatibility of captive marine organisms.
This was as recent as 2006.
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Michael Del Prete
CEO Aqua Craft Products www.AquaCraft.net
Sara, I have all ready tried the FOIA my filing was approved but it would appear the last person to have possession of the documents was a Mr. Sandy Berger. And now they can not be located.
I have refiled from a separate agency L.G.W. and I'm awaiting a reply
LOL... now, come on, you know that in reality it almost always takes more than the legislated 10 days to get a response to any FOIA request.
And I have absolutely no affiliation, past or present, with the LGW... any statements to the contrary are mere speculation and propaganda aimed at discrediting and defaming myself and my work.
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.
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“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
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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.
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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.
Last edited by curtswearing; 04-16-2007 at 04:25 PM.
Reason: More than one person was involved in this and I don't want to only label that one person
Yeah, I don't know... I think this article probably has even less information than my site. And I'm not sure I agree with the way they make it sound like just as many corals were returned as were taken. What they don't seem to be accounting for is the variation in the sizes of the "pieces" of corals taken vs. the ones that were returned (at least that seems to be the case when you compare the two inventories). So just comparing the #s of "pieces" taken and returned *could be* a bit misleading.
I do think it's interesting though that this was the first time in *17 years* that the FKNMS has ever recalled corals taken under a research permit. At least that affirms what I've been saying all along... that this was a BIG deal.
Overall, honestly, I'm a little disappointed... I thought the media would be able to get much more information than this. IMO, this article is even less satisfying than my website.
Less satisfying in what degree and to whom? I think that article clears up a lot of terribly misleading information.
"Smaller coral colonies were designated to be turned over to qualified researchers."
"Most of the corals were transferred as requested, and no enforcement action was taken, sanctuary spokeswoman Cheva Heck said. "
"Before that, the 499 coral samples were carried to Texas by a researcher before the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary formally demanded the return of the coral. "
"Sanctuary staff concluded it could have been a verbal misunderstanding."
"“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."
So after all this, 12 of the small 499 corals given to Eric were lost, the larger ones were transplanted as planned, and we still don't know why they felt the corals in Eric's care were in jeopardy. It looks to me the project was a huge success. The smaller corals weren't ever going to be transplanted, they were offered for research purposes.
In your quest for truth, why isn't any of that information on your website? What else, of importance or relevance, is there to find out?? Whatever questionable actions Eric took, there seems to be a conclusion of the outcome of the project, and the corals under Erics care has been returned.
And it looks like any media attention adverse to your beliefs are simply going to be discredited by a rather simple statement like, "Well, although I have some information that I cannot divulge, I have reasons to believe this is false." Nice. I would LOVE to see this article posted on your website. But wait, that might give people another side of the story.
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Originally Posted by sihaya
Why do you think these corals were doomed? They were marked for restoration. And even if they hadn't gone towards restoration, they might have gone to other researchers who could have cared for them better. In any case, I'm not at all convinced these corals were doomed at the time they were taken.
Wrong again Sara. Those corals given to Eric were corals too small to be used in transplantation and were to be used for propagation for research purposes. The whole purpose of the project was to relocate colonies large enough to survive transplant. It was a success. As a 'bonus' Eric B got to take the corals too small to be transplanted and use the for his personal research, not to save the worlds reef systems and reseed populations.
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Originally Posted by sihaya
... but I would think it could at least reduce my charge to "merely human."
This was my favorite one! Thank you for that... [Personal attack moderated out] Obviously some things happened that caused the Sanctuary to believe the corals were in danger, and they had them returned. I don't think Eric mixing regionally different corals was against anything originally agreed upon. Again, they were given to him for his personal research and they were asked to be returned for whatever reason. We're talking about 499 fairly small corals that couldn't be used for any other purpose than research. 12 corals were lost in the whole fiasco, and here we are now 2 years later arguing the significant impact this situation has had on the hobby, and possibly the world/oceans.
www.opportunitylost.org - The "Borneman Corals" is so one-sided it's unbelievable. The whole site makes it look like Eric B had some huge involvement in the Truman Annex relocation project and his actions alone caused some huge loss/impact. But the truth is - the only opportunity lost was his ability to further use corals given to him for research purposes. Nothing adverse to Sara's argument will ever be posted on opportunitylost because the truth isn't really being searched for. Sara is in a corner right now and is grabbing for straws as the only arguments left is "I have reason to believe this isn't true" and "Here are some other things that make Eric a bad person" but I'm sure that keynoter just made up those numbers and facts.
Less satisfying in what degree and to whom? I think that article clears up a lot of terribly misleading information.
LOL No it doesn't! If anything, it just raises even more questions.
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"Smaller coral colonies were designated to be turned over to qualified researchers."
Yes! That's how it was *supposed* to happen. But Mr. Borneman didn't just take "smaller coral colonies." He took large >50cm colonies. And he says this throughout his IMAC lecture and in his RK article.
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"Most of the corals were transferred as requested, and no enforcement action was taken, sanctuary spokeswoman Cheva Heck said. "
I've already explained to you twice in the Cincy forum why this part of the article is misleading. I even wrote to the reporter who kindly conceded to me that they had no way of knowing for sure the actual *quantity* of coral taken vs. the *quantity* of coral returned.
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"Before that, the 499 coral samples were carried to Texas by a researcher before the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary formally demanded the return of the coral. "
And this is the first time in *17 years* that coral has had to be recalled under a research permit. Doesn't that strike you as odd?
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"Sanctuary staff concluded it could have been a verbal misunderstanding."
I never eliminated this as a possibility either. Yes, it COULD have been a verbal misunderstanding. This we may never know for sure either.
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So after all this, 12 of the small 499 corals given to Eric were lost, the larger ones were transplanted as planned, and we still don't know why they felt the corals in Eric's care were in jeopardy.
It's not that simple. The "499 colonies" (it was actually much more than that if you look at his emails) Eric took were later cut down (as he mentioned in the documents). So you can't just compare #s of corals taken vs. returned.
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It looks to me the project was a huge success.
This is the most bizarre of all the comments I've seen on any forum discussing this. Huge success?! How?!?! Why!?!? What was accomplished?!? If you honestly think that something was accomplished by all this, then I'm afraid you just don't understand what happened at all.
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In your quest for truth, why isn't any of that information on your website?
Um, because it's wrong. The only documents posted on my site are official, government documents. And I plan to keep it that way.
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I would LOVE to see this article posted on your website. But wait, that might give people another side of the story.
I have no problem posting a link to that article on my website... however, it will have to be with a disclaimer stating that some points in the article seem to contradict the documents.
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Wrong again Sara. Those corals given to Eric were corals too small to be used in transplantation and were to be used for propagation for research purposes.
No. That's how it was SUPPOSED to be. That's not what actually happened. Watch Eric's 2004 IMAC lecture... read his RK article. He took huge colonies. That's what the FKNMS is saying "could have been a verbal misunderstanding." That possible "verbal misunderstanding" is over what size corals he was meant to take.
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The whole purpose of the project was to relocate colonies large enough to survive transplant. It was a success.
No, it wasn't. Maybe what was left of the corals was transplanted. I don't know. But what happened to the "Borneman corals" just tragic and no good came of it at all. The corals were recalled before the project could accomplish much of anything.
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As a 'bonus' Eric B got to take the corals too small to be transplanted and use the for his personal research, not to save the worlds reef systems and reseed populations.
What??! Where are you getting this?! The FKNMS demanded that he return ALL the corals he took... AND even all the fragments grown from the corals he took.
[Personal attack moderated out]
Response: Sorry, my bad, I honestly did mean that to be an attack. Let me re-phrase: David, please review the documents again. I know they can be a bit hard to follow, but I suspect that you may not have a full understanding of what the original project plans were and what ultimately happened.
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I'm sure that keynoter just made up those numbers and facts.
They didn't make up those numbers, they presented them in a way that didn't do justice to the truth. Again, see above...
I've emailed the Keynoter reporter personally and got a very thoughtful, kind response. I understand why they wrote what they wrote (or didn't write what they didn't write). The FOIA documents are still there for anyone to read. And they have a lot more information than that article.
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