I LOVE the colour of red coral beads and have several projects designed in my head that require beads of that deep, opaque colour.  However, I cannot bring myself to actually buy & use real coral.  I've tried carnelian but the colour is not quite red enough and the stone is too translucent.  Does anyone have any suggestions on substitutes? 

And does anyone know how exactly is coral harvested?

Here is one method of harvesting:

http://www.coralcalcium.com/coral-calcium-ecology.htm

 I got curious reading your post since I also have my doubts about using coral but I found this site:

Suzanne
 

 This is a really hard to answer question. It's hard to get all the facts from credible sources.

Rings & Things sells Asian Bamboo coral. But we are not positive it is environmentally correct even though there seems to be plenty of the Bamboo Coral we all sell and it does not seem to be listed as an endangered material.

It's good to publicly raise this kind of question. 

 Swarovski makes a color called "dark red coral".  I've seen it used in some necklaces (though I haven't used it myself) and it had a nice dark red, opaque look to it.  Of course, it didn't mimic coral, but at least it doesn't deplete natural resources...
 

There is a new Czech bead, "coral", but it's a coral/orange.  It is beautiful on its own, and I bought all that a LBS had in stock, but it's not a substitute for real coral.  I'll check out Swarovski's dark red coral.  Thanks for the reference.

Russ, I did discover in my research that Asian Bamboo Coral seems to be the least "bad" of coral used in jewelry, but I still cannot bring myself to use it.