so all coral has to be harvested from the wild? I dont know much about coral biology but I thought they could be grown in tanks?
There's different types of coral when you go the pet store to buy. Aqua cultured is by far the most available.
1. Wild - truly wild and obtained from highly regulated fisheries
2. maricultured - someone put the coral in the ocean, let it grow, and then harvested it for sale
3. aquacultured - it was grown in a tank somewhere.
You can grow coral in a tank but the growth rate will be no where near if you place it in the ocean and is a lot more expensive due to extras like electricity, employees, etc. There's a guy in North Dakota that makes a living growing coral
As of right now, maricultured is illegal because they can't pull them back out of the ocean. Until the fisheries minister clarifies their position on maricultured stuff, they hobby is kind of screwed. A lot of corals and fish come from that area because those water parameters are easiest to reproduce in the home aquarium.
Wild corals are very rare in the hobby and there's usually 1 or 2 quarter sized pieces collected. Then they're sold to someone that will propagate it and sell it to hobbyist.
Fish are different though. Most of the saltwater fish you see at a pet store are wild caught. There's only about a dozen or so SW fish that can be bred on a regular basis. Almost ever clown fish (Nemo) you see are captive bred.
Here's an older video on mariculturing.
