The debate over the 190-tonne quota and the future of the Great Barrier Reef
It is one of the seven natural wonders of the world and is on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. So why, critics ask, does Australia allow up to 190 tonnes of coral from the Great Barrier Reef to be cut and sold for use in aquariums around the world?
It is possible to choose between colorful options on Facebook pages and websites. duncanopsammiawith gently waving tentacles and stony corals Acropora – despite the practice being banned by other countries in the region.
The majority of corals extracted from the Great Barrier Reef will be sold on the international market, with most of them being sold to the United States and placed in specialized aquariums.
The live coral trade, worth $25 million annually in 2020-21, is legal and private operators are licensed by the Queensland government to hand-harvest soft and hard corals, sea anemones and coral debris.
A 2024 federal government review of Queensland Coral Fisheries said the industry had been encouraged to target specific species due to demand for colorful corals, “but there has been little data collection or analysis to understand the risk of coral extraction to the wider ecosystem”.
Given fisheries’ activities within both the Coral Sea Marine Park and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, fishermen are required to comply with federal environmental laws.
But as reefs experience serious and repeated mass bleaching in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022, 2024 and 2025, questions about the sustainability of the trade are increasing.
Australian Marine Conservation Society campaigner Simon Miller says wild harvest levels allowed by the Queensland and Australian governments may have been sustainable years ago, but not in the face of marine heatwaves and repeated bleaching events triggered by climate change.
“Some reefs are losing 40 percent of coral cover [during these events]”When we see the huge impacts of climate change and the tremendous pressure on corals, and we still have these fisheries… up to 190 tonnes of fish a year, it doesn’t look like they’re going to pass the pub test anymore,” he said.
“There are some real sustainability concerns, particularly for a handful of coral species that are found nowhere else in the world (found only in the Great Barrier Reef) and are of high value in the global aquarium trade.”
Australia is a major player in the international coral trade, second only to Indonesia, exporting live coral worth around $18 million in 2020-21 (latest figures available). The market supports 180 full-time equivalent jobs and 35 businesses.
But the difference is that Indonesia farms its corals, while Australia relies on wild harvesting.
AMCS is calling on Australia to phase out the legal trade in wild corals and move towards a model similar to Indonesia’s based on aquaculture.
But second-generation wild coral fisherman Caleb Cousland said 190 tons of special coral and other coral quota it was just a “paper quota” and it is estimated that around 60 tonnes are moved from the Great Barrier Reef each year.
His family’s company has the second largest quota in the country and can extract up to 28 tonnes of coral for export.
“In fact, this is one of the most heavily regulated fisheries in Australia and probably the world,” he said.
Cousland said increased regulations and changes introduced in recent years, including increased reporting requirements, meant less coral was being removed from reefs than in the past.
He said fishermen’s quotas include species that are not suitable for the aquarium trade.
“No one wants these corals… our coral quota is still allocated to them, but basically no one is collecting them, so there has also been a further reduction in the actual amount of coral collected from the Great Barrier Reef,” he said.
A 2024 federal assessment of coral fisheries said more research is needed to determine whether selective harvesting is harmful to the structure and function of local coral systems.
Corals are listed in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES).
According to the CITES convention, countries must prove that wild collection does not harm species. The European Union has imposed an import ban on a number of Australian corals due to insufficient data and record-keeping concerns.
“Exports of live wild coral have been banned by Indonesia, Thailand, Fiji and Belize, while the European Union and the United Kingdom have banned imports of some of the most valuable Great Barrier Reef corals,” AMCS’s Miller said.
“Yet, despite the Reef being in crisis, the harvest of our rare and unique corals continues.”
Federal Ministry of Environment in November announced that he was a partner has teamed up with supply chain innovation firm OriginsNext to develop a coral traceability plan to increase public confidence in the wild coral trade and support regulation and transparency of the trade.
Cousland argues that coral species can be protected by providing commercial coral licenses held by fishermen and said it is not in the industry’s interest to overharvest corals.
“Where will scientists get species that can work on reefs? [without live harvesting]?” he asks. “Because the problem with scientists is that they get stuck in too much bureaucracy. [that] They can’t actually go out and physically collect the corals themselves, so without our fisheries they wouldn’t have samples to do any research work on.
“Everyone in our fisheries knows that if you overwork an area, that area will not be productive in the future.”
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