March 11 (Bloomberg) — The people of Torre del Greco, 10 miles south of Naples, have lived off the red corals found in the Mediterranean Sea for more than two millennia. A proposal to list the species as endangered may push the seaside town’s $217 million-a-year coral industry into extinction. The U.S., the largest consumer of corals for use in decoration and jewelry, is proposing that all 31 species of red and pink coral be added to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES, treaty at a meeting in Doha, Qatar, starting March 13. The European Union, of which Italy is a member, backed the plan yesterday while asking for an 18-month delay in implementation. “We’ve survived world wars, economic crises and anything God and Mount Vesuvius have thrown at us, but this will kill us,” said Antonino de Simone, whose family has been fashioning brooches, rings and necklaces out of coral since 1830. He fears he’ll have to let go of his 25 employees and close shop. The added paperwork and damage to Torre del Greco’s image resulting from a CITES listing will cost $135 million in three years, says industry group Assocoral. Former high-end clients such as Tiffany & Co. and Bulgari SpA no longer want the town’s coral jewelry, and a campaign to end the use of the sea animal in fashion goods led by the environmental group Seaweb has gained support of designers Paloma Picasso and Kimberly McDonald. Torre del Greco was once a favored beach destination of Italian movie stars. Now tourists gravitate further down the Amalfi coast, leaving coral as the mainstay of the economy. The industry employs 5,000 people in a region suffering from chronic unemployment. Risk of Collapse The U.S. proposal would allow trade in the corals only if nations issue an export certificate showing they were sustainably harvested, said Andy Bruckner, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ecologist who drafted the plan. “If we let them keep going the way that they are, the industry is going to collapse,” Bruckner said. “If we can come up with a sustainable way to harvest it, we can have this industry continue into the future forever. That’s what the whole goal is. It’s really not to shut them down.” Producers in Torre del Greco pride themselves on protecting their local reefs, though about two-thirds of the coral used to make their jewelry is imported from Pacific stocks. A destructive form of trawling that involves dragging weighted nets along the seabed is still in use there even though it’s been banned in the Mediterranean since 1994. ‘It’s Crazy’ Michele Palomba, a coral fisherman for 30 years like his father before him, is today one of the 100 licensed locals who between May and September dive 80 meters (262 feet) with scuba gear to collect the coral. At such depths, one can stay under for no more than four minutes. “It’s crazy to me how they can say we have decimated our supplies, it’s simply not true,” Palomba said. “No one knows and loves and respects our sea more than us. This is our livelihood; why would we destroy it?” Unlike the Pacific variety, the coral in the Mediterranean is small and doesn’t grow in shallow waters, Palomba says. He and his colleagues handpick branches from healthy colonies, he said. Not everyone agrees the methods are sustainable. Waters shallower than 90 meters in the Mediterranean used to contain older corals that stood 50 centimeters (20 inches) tall, said Georgios Tsounis, a marine biologist at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Barcelona, whose research is cited by Seaweb. Now “they’ve basically gone” and those found in unprotected waters average about 4 centimeters and rarely exceed 10 centimeters, he said. Transformation “Once the fishery grew to industrial levels, it transformed virtually all known coral communities from a forest- like structure into a grassland-type structure,” Tsounis said. “Although harvesting does not seem to threaten the corals with extinction, it does impact their ecological function of serving as fish nurseries and helping preserve biodiversity.” It’s a fight the locals feel they cannot win. “We are up against the might of the U.S., misinformed environmentalists and big companies: We are doomed,” said Mauro Ascione, 45, one of eight siblings running the oldest coral- jewelry maker in Torre del Greco. “Our father wanted a big family to grow our business. Instead, we’ll attend its funeral.” For Related News and Information: Top Italian news stories: TOP IT Top Environment stories: GREEN Most-read environment stories: {MNI ENVIRONMENT )
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Red-Coral Rescue Plans Endanger Italian Jewelry Makers of Torre del Greco
