[en] Black corals (Cnidaria: Antipatharia) have been used for medicinal purposes or in jewellery
manufacturing since a long time in many parts of the world. Except in Hawaii where
these fisheries are well known, black coral harvests are usually made without any control
and management. This is the case in many tropical islands and particularly in Madagascar,
where the illegal trade that exists since decades has expanded dangerously during
the last years. Since 2011, an illegal traffic of black corals has been occurring in the
main cities of the southern and coastal regions of the country. Hundreds of kilograms
of black coral skeletons and a lot of diving material were seized by the authorities and
efforts were made by scientists and politicians to stop this illegal trade. Despite this and
the continual harvesting of these natural resources, there has been no study in the Indian
Ocean region on the biology and ecology of antipatharians. Our research aims at studying
black coral populations of the southwestern coast of Madagascar. Here, we explain
the current black coral harvesting occurring in the country and present the first insights
into the structure and biodiversity of a black coral meadow in Toliara. We identified 19
different morphotypes and described the skeleton spines, mesenteries structures and
general morphologies. Due to the general difficulty to identify species among the Order
Antipatharia, we also worked on ribosomal ITS regions to assess phylogenetic relationships
among these black corals
