Midway Coral — Hawaiian Pink Coral from a Closed Fishery
Midway Coral — Hawaiian Pink Coral from a Closed Fishery
Mid-twentieth-century pink Corallium from the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands
Midway coral is a trade name for pink Corallium-genus coral harvested historically from the deep waters surrounding Midway Atoll and the broader Northwestern Hawaiian Islands chain. The material was collected primarily during a brief mid-twentieth-century commercial window before the establishment of marine protected areas and subsequent fishery closures effectively ended new harvest. Material in the trade today is overwhelmingly old stock; most pink coral now in retail circulation comes from Mediterranean, Japanese, or Taiwanese sources rather than the Hawaiian fishery.
Source and biology
The pink corals of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands belong to the genus Corallium and to closely related deep-water octocoral genera. They grow on hard substrate in cold water at depths typically between 350 and 500 metres, in colonies that take many decades to centuries to reach harvestable size. Colour ranges from pale pink — the angel-skin tone prized in Japanese and Mediterranean material — through medium pink to a deeper rose; the Midway-area material is typically in the pale-to-medium-pink range. The skeletal axis is the carbonate material that takes a polish; the soft tissue overlying the skeleton has no commercial value and is removed in processing.
Commercial history
U.S. commercial harvest of Hawaiian deep-water coral began on a meaningful scale in the late 1960s and continued through the 1970s and 1980s, with operators using submersibles and dredge equipment to recover material from the bank tops in waters around Midway, the Hancock Seamounts, and the Cross Seamounts. The fishery was small in absolute terms but significant in the regional Hawaiian context. Concerns about the slow growth rate of the corals, the bycatch of associated benthic species, and the broader ecological role of these long-lived colonies led to progressive restrictions through the 1990s and 2000s.
The establishment of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in 2006 and its subsequent expansion in 2016 placed the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands waters under federal protection at a scale that effectively ended any future commercial harvest of the coral resources. The fishery is closed; what remains in the trade is material recovered before the closures and held in dealer inventory.
Trade availability
Pink coral represented as Midway or Hawaiian in current retail is rare and should be approached with care. Genuine old stock with documented provenance commands a premium for its rarity and the closed-fishery story; material being passed off as Hawaiian when its actual source is more recent Mediterranean or Pacific harvest is a recurring concern in the trade. The U.S. trade is also subject to Magnuson-Stevens Act and Endangered Species Act considerations on coral imports more broadly.
Most pink coral entering the trade today originates from the Mediterranean (Italian and Sardinian Corallium rubrum), the Japanese fishery around the Tosa Bay and Okinawa areas (Corallium japonicum and related species), and the Taiwanese fishery in the South China Sea and around Bashi Channel. CITES regulation applies to several of the relevant Corallium species and adds documentation requirements to international trade.