According to records found in old documents, man from Paleolithic times used the skeleton of semiprecious corals, and more recently objects have been found. It has been established their age between the 25,000 and the 6,000 years before our era (BC).
The use of the black coral, one of the semiprecious corals, seems to be much more recent. It was probably known in times of Greek and Roman, probably from Red Sea, and from the first ones it inherited the current scientific name, Antipathes, whose translation is “against the illnesses”, because they were attributed excellent medicinal qualities and aphrodisiacs. Other towns, used it as amulet to avoid the “evil eye” because of it magic properties.

Countless legends have been knitted through centuries around the use of this coral. One tells that Menelao, the celebrated Greek warrior that participated together with Ulises in the battle of Troya possessed a beautiful carved black coral, which he wore as amulet to avoid tragedies and to leave victorious in the combats.
The famous Roman sage Plinio defined in his time the black coral with the name Antipathidae, using it as antidote for scorpion stings and other medicinal purposes. The history also mentions the production of a powerful substance called chartioblepharm, to which aphrodisiac properties were granted.
Other references mention the case of old primitive tribes that carved the coral and they used it like decoration granting it protectors’ qualities of the bad spirits.
The black coral is a colonial animal, which is very frequently mistaken with a bush of the vegetable Kingdom due to its aspect. It almost always inhabits areas around the external border of the submarine platform that surrounds the islands and continents. It forms a not very uneven plain and shallow. It goes from the bank upto 50 m. of depth in many places, and starting from that limit the marked fall begins that constitutes the bank, sometimes forming an almost vertical slope that reaches many meters deep whose end is the abyssal plain to more than 600 m. deep.

As most of the species of black coral it is characterized by a slow growth (6 cm. long per annum in Cuban experiments). It has low natural death rate what forces to establish a control on the population's use in order to maintain it inside rational limits that impede the “over-fishing” and protect the population. To that purpose, the species is subject to a permanent prohibition, with an annual quota of fishing that is closely controlled for the Cuban fishing authorities.