Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Million-dollar heists usually take place in banks, jewelry stores or tony mansions. But Florida Keys authorities are trying to figure out who, if anyone, stole $1 million worth of corals and sponges and their resident algae and invertebrates from the sea floor.

A South Miami-Dade County marine life collector claims someone stole 300,000 pounds of "live rock" totaling $1 million from his "aqua farm" off Islamorada, according to a Monroe County Sheriff's Office press release issued Tuesday.

Neal Novak obtained two federal permits for the one-acre site off Alligator Reef from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. His plan was to sell the harvest to aquarium keepers through an online business called Rock'n Live Rock Inc.

From early 2005 through December 2007, Novak placed the rocks as a nursery. For the next 18 months, he tended to other details, such as readying five 1,400 gallon aquariums.

When he returned to Alligator Reef on May 13, he said he was amazed to see everything was gone.

"I kept checking the GPS to make sure it was correct. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. But the GPS doesn't lie," Novak said Tuesday.

The Sheriff's Office has asked the public for help in finding who stole the live rock. Detectives and Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers speculated that removing the rock would have required several barges, a boat equipped with live wells that woule be able to take the weight, as well as other large, specialized equipment.

An Upper Keys live rock site operator, however, is not so sure Novak's investment was stolen.

Tavernier-based marine biologist Ken Nedimyer, who tends his two sites twice a week, contends the area could be covered in sand from storms and hurricanes that have brushed the Florida Keys in recent years.

"It could have absolutely disappeared," Nedimyer said. "It could be right or within 10 feet from there just buried under several feet of sand."

Novak dismissed the suggestion. His permit required him to plant on hard bottom, where there was only a thin layer of sand above it, he said.

"It is physically impossible for 150 tons of rock to settle into 6 inches of sand," he said.

Storms, he added, are an unlikely culprit. They might unstack the rocks, but they won't move them away entirely, he said. Besides, the Upper Keys didn't see a hurricane in 2008, he said.

Passing tropical storms and hurricanes, however, have created sandbars and beaches off the Keys, as was the case during the 2005 hurricane season. Sand blanketed many reefs. And last year, the city of Key West lost about 10 feet of sand from its beaches throughout tropical storms and hurricanes Fay, Gustav and Ike.

tohara@keysnews.com

rsilk@keysnews.com