of its life. The male to female polyp ratio is 1:1, with females producing anywhere from 1.2 million to 16.9 million oocytes. A large tall coral tree is somewhere between 30 and 40 years old. The estimated natural lifespan of a black coral colony in the epipelagic zone is 70 years. However, in March 2009 around 4,265 years old specimens of Leiopathes glaberrima were found at depths of nearly , making them some of the oldest living organisms on earth. The researchers showed that the "individual colony longevities are on the order of thousands of years." Rarely, black corals will grow too large to support their own weight, and collapse. Human use and harvesting Black corals have historically been associated with mystical and medicinal properties in Indonesian, Chinese, and Hawaiian culture. More recent harvesting has been for use as jewelry. Many Indo-Pacific peoples believed that black coral has curative and anti-evil powers and made them into necklace and bracelets; however, black corals are not ideal for jewelry-making due to it being soft as opposed to stony, causing jewelry made with it to dry out and break. If a real black coral is boiled in milk, it will smell of myrrh; this test can be used to determine if a sample is genuine. The best studied and regulated black coral fisheries are in Hawaii, where they have been harvested since the 1960s. In the Caribbean harvesting is typically done to produce jewelry for sale to tourists, and has followed a boom-and-bust cycle, where new coral populations are discovered and overexploited leading to rapid declines. For example, Cozumel, Mexico, was famed for dense black coral beds that have been harvested since the 1960s leading to widespread black coral population declines. Despite improvements in management in Cozumel, including no harvesting permits issued since the mid-1990s, the black coral population had failed to recover when assessed in 2016. Though it is illegal to move black corals across international borders without authorization, as they are listed in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), it is still possible to buy them. Though various methods have been tried to rejuvenate black coral colonies quicker and more efficiently, none have worked to the point where it would work for full restoration. Threats Though black corals are not listed on the IUCN Red List, a number of factors threaten them today. The largest