The Indonesian authorities have completed an audit of farmed corals in the country, ready for exports to resume.
For now, businesses can only ship what was approved by the authorities in the December audit.
There will also be a number of regulatory changes to coral mariculture, and a new inspection procedure will be implemented for coral exports.
Vincent Chalias, who set up the first Indonesian coral mariculture farms at the beginning of the century and spent more than 20 years running them, wrote a report in the Reef Builders about the situation and said each coral export shipment now needs to be registered online five days before the shipping date prior to an inspection. Inspectors will then issue a recommendation letter that will allow the issuing of a Health Certificate for customs.
He said: “All existing coral farms will be more regularly audited and moving corals from one farm to another will be a lot more difficult.
“Starting a new farm will be a lot more complicated, farming a new species will require very difficult-to-get documents, and getting a licence to collect fresh, new or original broodstock is now almost impossible – all of this is on top of a pre-existing, really complicated process.”
The upshot is that exports will be limited and prices will be ‘a lot higher’ due to limited supplies and the now sky-high costs of producing and exporting.
He added: “Every company involved in the live coral trade needs to completely forget what Indo corals used to be like because after the hiatus it’s a complete, new industry that is emerging from the suspension.”
