Shane Graber
Chalk another one up to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service! On March 11th, two Taiwanese nationals, Gloria and Ivan Chu, pleaded guilty in a U.S. Virgin Islands federal court to nine counts for conspiring to illegally ship internationally protected black coral into the United States. U.S. Customs’ Contraband Enforcement Team flagged the suspicious boxes labeled “plastic of craft work” in August and December 2009 and x-rayed them to in order to ascertain their contents. The resulting x-ray showed rod-like structures in the packages that were indicative of coral. Upon opening, huge quantities of black coral were found:
美国鱼类和野生动物服务局以及国家海洋和大气管理局以及移民和海关执法的综合努力导致格洛里亚和伊万·楚在2010年1月最终被捕。这对夫妻被判处每人罚款$ 12,500，并服役20，并服役20和20在监狱中分别30个月，被禁止
three years from shipping coral as well as other wildlife after their prison sentence is complete. The illegal activity ran from 2007-2009 and the Chu’s exported more than $194,000 worth of falsely labeled black coral to an undisclosed company without the required CITES permits. Black coral (family Antipathidae) are one of the few coral groups that can be worked by jewelers into fine jewelry. Typically artisans make it into either sculptures or it’s highly polished and made into inlaid jewelry. It’s a very slow growing coral that only grows by 4-35µm (0.0001-0.001 inches) per year and individual colonies can last for thousands of years; it is an internationally protected coral species due to these characteristics.
