If you don’t know who Vincent Chalias is by now you must have been living under a very big piece of live rock. Following on the successes of Bob Mankin in the Solomon Islands and Walt Smith in Fiji, Mr. Chalias is one of the pioneers of aquarium coral mariculture in Indonesia. In recent years Vincent has been making the rounds in America having been invited to speak at both of the last two MACNA conferences where the hobby has been able to put a face to the man who has been instrumental in increasing the diversity of maricultured stony corals available to the aquarium trade.
What makes Vincent stand out is that not only is he a successful coral farmer, he’s also a total coral-head and his curious coral eye has brought us such notable exquisite corals as Acropora efflorescens, the Red Dragon Acro, a ton of different deepwater stony coral species and more. He has also contributed to many scientific discoveries such as Euphyllia baliensis and Histiophryne pogonius frogfish.
Along with ourselves, Chalias was the other principal organizer of the Fluval Sea Flores Expedition and together we made lots of interesting observations and exciting discoveries during our time between Komodo and Rinca islands. While we were in Indonesia for this trip we sat down with Vincent to talk about what it’s like to be a coral farmer in Bali and some of the highlight of the extensive diving we did in the Flores Sea.
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