harvesting own coral possible?

I have never heard of private farms you can pay to harvest from – but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I dropped you a link to the fishing licensing board – here it is from the main page: http://myfwc.com/license/

If you need a saltwater fishing license its only $30 for a non-resident for 7 day.

I know people do rent ocean from the government where they make their own reef and harvest from it for resale. Are you advanced certified scuba? What level are you and your girlfriend ?

 

Buy some aquacultered stuff cmon man we beat up the ocean enough. reefing is about your love for the ocean and the life in it. Go to a LFS and buy some ora stuff. Its not about setting up the "coolest" tank the cheapest way possible. besides it probably wont live until you get alllllllllllllllll the way back from vacation.

 

K+ to this statement! If you are wanting a momento of your trip, buy a cheap Kodak underwater disposable and take pictures.
I can understand your wanting very much and would feel exactly the same if the shoe were on my foot. It would be pretty cool to have some softs in my tank that I personally collected but in the big picture it's really just not the right thing to do imho.

 

The thing is, if I were anywhere near the ocean, I would take it only if it were something I hadn't seen before, and grow it into a mother colony for propagation into the trade. Once it's at that point, you can put the first few polyps (5 is maximum collection, after all) back into the ocean, and you just made a sustainable decision on collection and propagation.

Unfortunately, Florida wants you to have a special license for coral collections when used even broodstock for a mother colony. They likely wouldn't want you to put polyps back, either.

 

I said this earlier - the problem still resides in the harvesting of the reef. Unless you are an expert diver you will more than likely have issues staying still to harvest and that puts the reef in danger as your body beats the reef. Plus inexperianced harvesters may very well take a clipping and kill the colony -- its just not worth it.

 

Take memories, leave only bubbles... or take pictures. But please don't take anything from our ocean that doesn't belong to you.

 

:clapping: the memories/bubbles line is on my dive bag !!

 

Don't let this ruffle your feathers too much, but I see you're from Michigan, right? And a Mid-Westerner in Florida is just a another clueless tourist. We want tourists to keep their hands to themselves and their feet off the reef.

Take pictures, Leave Bubbles....

Or a Bull Shark might tear one of your limbs off.

 

You two do realize not only is that not really a cool thing to say on a family oriented website.. but.... your state highly depends on the 60+ billion tourism brings in. Be local all you want but realize those tourists pay your states bills!!!!