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This is the skeleton of one of the most smuggled animals in the world - and most people don't even know it's an animal. When alive, corals create these beautiful, and endangered underwater reefs. But coral skeletons are also highly prized for jewelry and decoration. "They can reach up to like $100,000 for such a necklace." Now, smuggling rings and a $9M trafficking industry are hunting some species to near extinction. So is there such a thing as ethical coral, and how can we stop them from being wiped out? This lab at the University of Zurich is trying to answer those exact questions. And they think they've unlocked a key part of the puzzle.
"We have an option to tell the true origin of precious corals in the trade." That's Bertalan Lendvay, a scientist who checks the DNA of corals to help fight trafficking. Lots of these red corals are made into artifacts or necklace beads like these. "Especially if you have a bigger piece then you can make a sculpture, or just carve the coral benches and then have it as a table ornament." Some are sold with certificates of authenticity to show that they were both harvested ethically and traded legally. In 2022, Lendvay came up with a way to get DNA from coral items like these with minimal damage.
"The first thing to do is take a little sample from it. So, this is a bead that already has drill holes. So, I can just go inside with this small drill and take sample from inside this drill hole." The sample that looks like dust in this tube is then purified and goes through incubation. The results are out usually after a few days. "So this is how a raw DNA sequence looks like." Then he compares it to the database he built. "We can tell if the information provided with this specimen is correct. And through that we can inform our clients or authorities
if the information they got from the trader or the owner of precious corals is true." The DNA result can give authorities extra proof of the coral's species and original location, on top of its certificate, and appearance. And making sure that only certified corals can be traded is becoming more important than ever. Because almost half of the world's coral species in warm water that build reefs are at risk of being wiped out by climate change and human activities such as fishing. There's an international treaty to protect wildlife called CITES. It runs lists of protected species and along with them, a permit system for international trade. If someone wants to sell a coral
that's on the protected list, they either have to show an export permit or a certificate of origin. Export permits are issued if authorities determine the trade doesn't harm the species survival, the harvest is legal and the shipment is safe. But there are weaknesses in the system that smugglers can exploit, as we will see in a minute. Legal trade of corals under CITES is huge. Red corals have been used for thousands of years as precious ornaments and they have a place in the elite market. And though red corals are everywhere in the oceans, they are only commercially harvested in the Mediterranean Sea and the northern Pacific Ocean.
Right now, the largest demand comes from the US. But the red coral market is dwarfed by the market for stony or grey coral. These live corals are particularly sought by both professional and hobbyist aquariums. The demand is so large that over a million of live corals are sold each year: mainly from Australia, Indonesia, Pacific islands to the US, UK and China. And alongside this large legal industry, millions of coral pieces, living or dead, have been poached and smuggled in the past two decades.
A common way to smuggle listed corals is to falsify the CITES certificate. Some others hide the corals in passenger luggage on flights, or mix them with legally-caught fish shipments. For red corals, most busted operations are in China, while some are also reported in Italy. Poland has busted the most cases when it comes to live stony corals. At times when corals are facing existential threats, stopping such smuggling is key to protecting the species. Corals aren't just beautiful to look at on diving trips. They protect the shorelines from huge waves, help us develop medicine, and are home to 25% of all marine life.
These coral reefs are suffering biodiversity breakdown as climate change and water pollution turn the oceans warmer and more acidic. It's been estimated that if ocean heatwaves keep going, by 2050, up to 90% of coral reefs could be dead. The threat is so great that even legally-bought coral is coming under scrutiny. "The aquarium trade is only known generally to the people who are involved in it and not to the public so much." Bert Hoeksema is a marine biologist in the Netherlands who studies coral reef conservation.
"We have the coral trade, which is indeed a silent killer. But the specific threat of the aquarium trade is that coral species are specifically targeted." Many species of corals take years or even decades to grow. "If you think about the pacific corals those huge colonies from where big statues are made that could be easily over a century." That's Alessandro Cau, a marine biologist who consulted for the UN on Mediterranean red corals. A coral colony is formed when hundreds of thousands of individual animals called polyps come together - you can see them on the reef surface. If a whole colony in a region is harvested,
it can take decades for it to recover. And it's more than just the reefs themselves. "A major effect of the removal is the complete destructuring of the seabed. So it reduces the complexity of the seabed and consequently the biodiversity associated." To protect biospheres, some countries such as India and the Philippines have banned commercial coral harvesting and exporting. Cau says a complete trade ban isn't always possible as sustainability concerns need to be weighed against economic benefits. And when demand for something is so high, the risk is that quotas or bans make smuggling an attractive enterprise.
So what can we do to safeguard these keystone organisms? That's where Coral-ID could be a game-changer: "So the main aim is to be able to distinguish the CITES listed protected species from the species that are not protected." This matters because several precious red coral species look very similar - also for customs agents. Checking coral DNA could become a crucial crime-fighting tool. "Corals are part of this work that we do with animals for law enforcement." You can an idea of the difficulty of the task when you consider the eight red coral species on the table.
"So there are four species that are CITES listed, so protected. How they are related to each other is so complex that it might be easier also for the authorities to say, yeah, all of these precious corals are on the same level of protection." It might be surprising, but the red coral species Corallium rubrum is classified as endangered but isn't on a CITES list. Because ultimately it's about what countries discuss and decide. If they are added to the list, it could mean more protection. "And to do that, there's a provision in the treaty that is frankly underutilized, but it asks parties to assess whether that level of trade is too high given the role of that species in its ecosystem." That's Erica Lyman, a US professor specializing
in international environmental law with a focus on CITES. "If that trade is too high for that species to sustain its role in the ecosystem, then parties are asked to restrict trade accordingly." Lendvay says DNA testing can potentially be expanded to cover live corals. And although most requests come from precious coral traders, governments could also use the technology to check confiscated coral imports. Many territories including the US, the EU, Hong Kong, among others, fine and jail smugglers, so inspection and identification can be key.
Experts like Hoeksema suggest that importing countries and also private aquariums can also require more proof from the sellers to ensure the harvest and trade are legal. But legal trading limits still risk overharvesting, so the largest live stony coral exporter Indonesia is farming them to meet the demand. It's been so effective that it exports more farmed than wild corals. However, not all coral species are suitable. "A lot of experiments tried to promote artificially the growth of red coral, but without any good outcome, let's say, or something that could be scaled in industry."
Red corals are hard to transplant and take a long time to grow, so farming struggles to meet the high demand. However, sustainable coral farming could help restoration efforts and reduce the damage from the legal coral trade. Of course, the best way to protect coral would be to reduce ocean warming. But there are other short-term options besides farming. One Swiss startup is trying to recreate homes for marine life that lost their coral shelter. They place 3D-printed terracotta reef structures like these in the ocean to help regenerate marine habitats.
This is already done in different places like the Maldives and the Philippines. Stricter regulations around human activities in marine protected areas could be another way to help corals recover. And addressing the hidden issues in the coral trade could do much to reduce the direct pressure on coral ecosystems worldwide. What do you think is the best way to stop illegal coral trade? Let us know in the comments below and don't forget to subscribe to the channel for more stories like this.
