Black Coral

I think they sell black coral here but of course its usually something else. You probably got taken. How much did you pay and how big was the piece?

Black coral can crack. It is coral after all and brittle. It usually has a brown vein running through it. It isn't usually pure black. A diver friend buys me it as it is good luck to give it to others if you scuba dive. Bad luck to keep it for yourself.

I have to ask

Is it not illegal to get coral ?? I have seen it many places, but I guess I never really thought about it until I seen this thread.

It is definately illegal to get coral, no matter what the people tell you. However, it is still widely available, and the authorities don't seem to care about doing something about it, which is a shame. It has been illegal to harvest or sell for at least 6 years now.

Truth about Saman? black coral

We used to sell it in PR tourist shop. Coral is created by the skeletons of marine coelenterate polyps which live in vast colonies. Black coral is an especially hard version found only in deep water (from 200 to 6000 feet). When brought to the surface by divers or submersibles, it has the appearance of a bush of ebony wood, but unlike wood, black coral can have a hardness of 3 to 6 on a lapidarist scale of 1 to 9. It polishes like a stone but looks like wood. Mining of black coral has been suspended entirely, or harshly restricted, in its prime locations in the Japanese and the Hawaiian Islands.

Though rare, it can still be found in the shallow waters of Saman? Bay in the Dominican Republic, where it has the least hardness of the black corals. The deeper the water, the harder the species. In any case, much of the black coral sold in the DR may be wood such as Aroma (Mesquite) soaked in dirty diesel motor oil, then dried. It can pass because black coral does have a barely perceptible, slightly brownish, grain.

Why not buy Larimar?