Ricordea from Haiti

[Anonymous]

Unless you continually import from Haiti! then you would have fresh papers, meanwhile you could be doing the ole swap arooney and everyone would assume its legit. You could easily trick F&W. Importing is largely done on a honor system, our trade is full of less then honorable people. From what i understand, Florida collectors have told me that the orange do not exist in Haiti, only in the keys....I have seen orange in the keys myself, never been to Haiti so i cant speculate on whats there. I do know that many Florida collectors are drunk jack a$$es, and sometimes crackheads, so if they can poach orange, and there is a wholesaler willing to play the game then this is plausible. Assuming this behavior is true, i think its deplorable and it just goes to show how lazy and greedy some can be. You can collect orange on legal size substrate glue it down to aquacultured rocks and sell "legal" pieces, but no, thats too hard. I know Bob is big on Haiti, and i dont know if the constant buzz is to be directed at him. There are others that ship Haitian.

I would assume that different colors other then green and blue could come from Haiti. Its not that far from the keys and the only real difference would be seasonal water temp changes. Therefore, it is also possible that no swapping is occuring and everyone is playing by the rules.

I don't think that at the amount/high vis Bob is, that he'd even attempt to do the Keys swap That's a lot of weekly swapping Your more in the game then I though, so I dunno :lol:

 

[bobimport]

Swapping ricordea? LOL FWC thought of that and worked with fish and wildlife to accompany a shipment that was in bond at the airport from Haiti to my warehouse. They watched as i opened it. Yup gold, green,blue and all the colors of the rainbow were in the shipment. Case closed
As to buying ricordea from someone else in Haiti? Forget it. Only 2 people have permits to ship rock. My guy who i have dealt with for 20 years. To give you an idea the kind of relationship we have I go to Costco every 3 or 4 months and ship about 10 boxes of fresh meat to Haiti for him as a favor my treat. So forget it he clears all customers with me. The other guy ownes no equipment and packs off the beach. At this time I am the only one receiving ricordea from Haiti period. The only reason I get it is that I sent a 29 foot shrimp boat to Haiti that allows the divers to range over 100 miles from Port au Prince. As the roads are so bad you cant transport divers and rock over them. In bad I mean dirt roads and car jacking, kidnappings and murder. He regularly sends me photos of bullet holes in his truck. We bought a new truck but keep it off the road so as not to get it carjacked. When you drive through Port au Prince in a pick up someone must sit in the back with a shotgun to guard the cargo. I once got a call that I was going to be missing a box of 1000 land hermit crabs that was taken when the truck stopped on the way to the airport. I can only wonder at the guy that stole it looked like when he opened it.

I understand now that to push even harder to close ricordea in the Keys FWC is enforcing zero sub strata. Not even a chip. or a pebble.

zBob

 

[dizzy]

I understand now that to push even harder to close ricordea in the Keys FWC is enforcing zero sub strata. Not even a chip. or a pebble.

zBob

Wow Andy you need to hurry up with that hatchery. I wonder if Elwyn is doing Rics yet, in that huge facility he has?

 

[Usename]

At this time I am the only one receiving ricordea from Haiti period.

This is not true. I know of others who import from Haiti and the shipment includes ricordea. Not large rocks with ricordea but ricordea polyps and most with some quarter sized rocks.

Anyways. I guess this was not the point of this thread so thats it for that.

 

[swsaltwater]

from what I hear they are destroying the reefs down there. Why would you support such destructive collection methods? Just curious. There is no need to take such large rocks to get those rics IMO. They can collect them with less substrate and a little more elbow grease.