“…Available data from 1978 to present, as reported by several authors Liverino 1998;Santangelo & Abbiati 2001;Bruckner 2009;Cau et al 2013;Tsounis et al 2013), have been extracted from Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reports that were, in turn, provided by the red coral wholesalers and manufacturers . Information regarding the bank distribution along the Italian coasts was obtained from Gaetani (1867), Panceri (1871), Targioni-Tozzetti (1880), Colombo (1887), Parona (1898), Lo Bianco (1909, Mazzarelli (1915aMazzarelli ( ,b, 1931, Mazzarelli and Mazzarelli (1918), Peruzy (1923), Scatizzi (1935), Errico and Montanelli (2008), Cattaneo-Vietti and Bavestrello (2010), Gangemi (2011Gangemi ( , 2014, Santangelo et al (2007Santangelo et al ( , 2012, Priori et al (2013), Bramanti et al (2014) and Bavestrello et al (2014b).…”