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- Ventura Frag Swap ,Ventura ,CA on Dec 5th -09
Imagine the surprise of live rock farmer Neal Novak when he boated out to his Islamorada aquaculture site to discover only 10% of his more than 300,000 pounds of rock remained at the site where he was farming live rock. Mr. Novak is a boat captain from Miami who aspired to become a live rock farmer and now it appears that the more than $100,000 he has invested in the Keys live rock operation has literally been stolen from the ocean floor. But how do you lose track of 150 tons of rock? Mr. Novak has been caring for his parents for the past year and a half since he last checked the site but he was crushed to find that somone had stolen his livelihood with live rock having a street value between 1.5-2 million dollars. It’s incredible to imagine that someone could have collected so much rock from the site over multiple trips without ever being noticed but one thing is for sure: selling off that much rock will leave some kind of a trace. If you know of anyone in Southern Florida posessing or selling an unusually large amount of Florida live rock (who isn’t a live rock farmer), please contact the Florida Fish and Wildlife Comission. We feel for Mr. Novak and we hope that they catch the lowlifes who stole his rock.
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This thing has 6 Comments
His situation is unfortunate, but the loss on investment seems avoidable if he invested a bit more money for security and/or insurance during his absence. There seems to be a naiveté present, but perhaps I assume that because I come from a big city where we lock our doors and set our alarms.
There is interesting discussion at the article site about the possibility that the rock is now buried by current or otherwise displaced by hurricane. Sounds more plausible to me than someone hoisting it…
I dunno I would have to disagree with you, 150 tons of rock isn’t something that just disappears in a year with only 10% remaining. If the Florida Fish and Widlife Commission or even any other typo of Florida Wildlife based department is invloved it probably is pretty safe to say that they are looking for some one because the thing is that not did these people on take a whole lot of rock but they didn’t do it sustainably which could cause harm to the environments around the excavation site.
who do you not make the trip to check on your investment? i know that if i had that much invested i wouldnt just leave it up to fate to watch over it.
A possibility which I think is very likely is it is still down there, just covered with sand. The outfit I worked with would dive on the base rock monthly to uncover what the encrouching sand had covered. Sand on the floor is just like sand in the desert, it is always shifting. Sometimes after storms they would lose over twenty feet of a rock row because it was covered. Now think about what can happen in 1 1/2 years unattended with possibly two hurricane seasons.
I wonder if this is how the fish feels when we collect their rocks and corals from their reef system LoL. Sorry had to go there.
Sorry for your lost, but could see how someone in this economy would want $1million dollars of rock
here where I live in Brazil I get for my live reef rocks that are buried in the sand, they have no pest, but the problem is that some are totally white as if they had been chlorinated, others will suffer the action of hydrogen sulfide and brown look good.
if they were buried because of the hurricane should be completely white
excuse me the mistakes, I’m using the google translator