ReefStock 2013 is fast approaching so it’s time to let ya’ll know who’ll be speaking and why these are the best guys for the job this year. We are incredibly pleased this year to expand to two days, with Clive Bentley and Chris Turnier holding down the speaker presentations on Saturday March 2nd.
Chris Turnier’s name may not be immediately recognizable to the broader public but his efforts over the past decade have helped to shape the marine aquarium trade in America as we know it. ‘Sustainable Chris’ currently works for the prolific fish breeders at Sustainable Aquatics but way before that, Chris Turnier was instrumental in starting up a little company called Reefer Madness, maybe you’ve heard of it?
Chris has worked all levels of our marine aquarium industry, having lived some time in Fiji in collection and mariculture of a diversity of soft and stony coral species. When we have questions about stony corals, we can count on one hand the people we turn to for uncommon coral knowledge and Chris is among them. Mr. Turnier will be speaking on his extensive experience with aquarium corals, both in nature and in captivity and his talk is sure to be a fresh, eye-opening look at corals beyond the glass boxes we keep them in.
If Chris Turnier is on our shortlist of coral gurus, then Clive Bentley is the Sage One when it comes to the inner workings and new developments in LED technology. A frequent contributor on LED topics for Reef Builders, Clive Bentley is credited with kicking off the huge push for LED lighting in the aquarium hobby/industry starting with the OG PAR38 EvilC LED spotlight.
The LED craze would have happened anyway but from where we were standing, Clive’s lighting work pushed up the curve by at least a couple years and helping make American reefers the most knowledgeable Aquarium LED users in the world. Before Mr. Bentley’s big MACNA talk he will be cutting his teeth and blowing your mind about LEDs in Denver where he has previously debuted crazy LED projects for ReefStock, and this year will be no different.
Since its inception we have strived to bring the best of the best top knowledge to speak at the ReefStock conference. Having already featured all the All-Stars of the aquarium speaker circuit (Sprung, Joshi, Kohen, Yauillo & Vargas to name a few), it gets harder each year to invite some pillars of our aquarium world. With Bentley and Turnier to ReefStock 2013 we will be giving the spotlight to lesser known but profoundly influential marine aquarists, and remember that we have two more speakers to announce for Sunday March 3rd. [ReefStock]
