HAWAI‘I JEWELER DIVES DEEP TO HARVEST ISLE CORAL
By Catherine E. Toth
HONOLULU, Hawaii (January 31, 2000 – The Honolulu Advertiser)---With the help of a one-man submersible, Maui Divers Jewelry plans to harvest precious Hawaiian coral for the first time in 20 years.
Using one-man submersibles called Deepworker 2000, the local jewelry manufacturer says it will be able to harvest its own deepwater coral -- black, pink, gold and red -- without depleting the valuable marine resource.
The company used to harvest its coral in a Star II submersible it owned in the 1970s but stopped in 1976 because of the cost, said Bob Taylor, president and chief executive of Maui Divers Jewelry.
"We have been having to really carefully preserve the inventory of precious coral we had," he said.
"The key work is ‘selective,’ said Richard W. Grigg, University of Hawai‘i oceanography professor, who has studied precious coral for 40 years and advises companies on...