Sitting down and listening to Richard Ross giving us the inside slant at farming and collecting corals in Tonga was a pleasure. Rich,who besides working at the famous Steinhart Aquarium, California Academy of Sciences is a cephalopod guru. Farming in Tonga is a challenge, for numerous different reasons including the local labor just not wanting to work and the non sustainable methods in which locals gather corals and fish from the local reefs. If you missed out on the cephalopod guru’s presentation you can catch him again at Imac west.
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I think you may have stopped typing too early on this one, Ryan. This entry certainly leaves readers wanting to hear more details of Richard’s experiences in Tonga; that much is good. But if you’re going to choose examples to summarize his opinions, then maybe choose more carefully. From the above, it almost sounds like the point of his talk was that the Tongans are lazy (”not wanting to work”) and irresponsible (”non-sustainable methods”). It’d be nice to balance that out by mentioning some of the other challenges he faced.
Anyway, I don’t mean to be needlessly critical; just wanted to share my initial reaction.
Our local reef club, the Northern Valley Reefers (www.nvreefers,org), is having Richard come out to one of our meetings to chat about this topic. Should be really informative and really looking forward to meeting him.
Brian
I’ll make sure to make it a point that I don’t think Tongan’s are lazy or irresponsible. There are challenges with ‘Island mentality’ but they can be dealt with. Some of the pressures that impaced the project IMO were regular business issues combined with business in a foreign land combined with pressure to collect volume in a short time.
Heh heh, my name with guru after it seems odd.
I look forward to meeting you Brian!
I heard CAF&G goes to Rich for proper coral ID
GURU all the way 
Wait…Brian…I know you?!
G – shush!