hmmmmmmmmmmmm interesting reading there Mindy and Phil

Zoas/palys and softies are none cities. They should be fine as long as they are not attached to a coral based substrate. Only hard corals need cities permits. Any hard corals coming from the states require a re-export permit with a copy of the original export cities permit from the country of origin because the states do not have any of their own coral available for cities export.

A couple of points need to be re-stated and comments made.

It is simply illegal to import SPS into Canada without CITES permits accompanying the shipment.

If you attempt to do so you will be charged with a serious offence and the Courts will deal with you severely.

A hobbyist who imported a butterfly and got the exporter to falsify the invoice was fined $25,000.00 and the courts comments were harsh to him.

The comment that border staff would not be able to tell a softy from and SPS is not true.
Wildlife have experts on staff who can do a better job at identifying coral than 99% of us on this board.

If you get horny over a certain coral picture, print it out and take it to your LFS. They will find an exporter who will ship them one for you.

I assume you are talking butterfly fish? A few people posted earlier that fish don't require cites yet, why would someone falsify a document to say otherwise? Was this an endangered one? Just curious as I prefer to buy fish after only seeing them first hand anyway.

That's what I do! :mrgreen:

No it was a butterfly on the CITES list that the collector imported. Marine fish that we import do not require CITES yet. There was talk about putting the Bangaii Cardinal on the List but it was not approved.

Wow, that turned into one expensive bug!

But that product still may not be able to be shipped to Canada. Again, there are issued with obtaining re-export permits from USFW for some cultured corals.

Wholesalers just need to stumble upon similar looking corals with no specially described lineage right?

Sure can...as long as you are able to obtain permits. This is essence is the entire point of the thread. It is actually pretty black and white.