I’ve just returned from a reef meet that shouldn’t have worked. Because instead of being set up like a coral show with vendors, sponsors, and speakers, it was set up like a chat show for all things saltwater. No corals, no electricals, no water even – just chat – and it was one of the best aquarium shows I’ve ever been involved with.
The brainchild of AAC’s Paul Hughes, Coral Freaks 1 happened five years ago, before being scuppered by Covid and replaced in 2022 by Love2Reef. Coral Freaks 1 was a coral vendor show – Paul’s first stab at putting on something like the type of coral show that happens frequently in the States. But for Coral Freaks 2 Paul had different ideas. He rang me and said he wanted to create a reefing chatshow that was more akin to a TV chatshow than a conventional reef event, and that he wanted to call it “A Reefing Audience With…”
My first impressions were that it wouldn’t work. Even with reefing celebrities brought in from North America, reefkeeping is a visual hobby that (I thought,) visitors would want to go there to see and shop for corals, and worse still, a proportion of reef show visitors queue up early to have first pick of the corals before leaving early too. Speakers are just a distraction for that type of visitor and a show made up just of speakers couldn’t and shouldn’t be strong enough glue to keep everybody in the same room. But I was wrong.
A Reefing Audience With… was a ticketed event with a finite number of tickets to keep it relatively small, and inclusive. Instead of having multiple sponsors, Paul asked just one – Aperture – who are represented in the UK by Xodis for EcoTech Marine and by D-D for Aqua Illumination. The special guests were Tony Vargas, Jamie Craggs, Than Thein, Patrick Foster, and Trina Parsons, and the sponsorship tied in well as Jamie uses an Apex to coordinate his coral spawning and Pat and Trina developed the AB+ spectrum for the Radion. D-D’s David Saxby got a lifetime achievement award too, as he has been reefkeeping since 1978!
People came from all over the UK to attend the event held in Essex, with some German visitors too – none other than Nyos, Abyzz, and Fauna Marin, who came along. Paul and the AAC team put on lunch for 150 people and we ate, drank, talked, listened, and learned. Each speaker had a half-hour slot and then they joined forces to take questions from the audience at the end.
A good cause
The event raised £3000 for the mental health charity MIND, there was a raffle, with prizes including AI lights and pumps, EcoTech lights, a Neptune Apex, and more, and although I say there was no livestock the event was held a stone’s throw from Advanced Aquarium Consultancy, which opened early and closed late in order to accommodate those who had their appetites well and truly whetted. Speakers, sponsors, and some visitors went on to a pub that night, and the feedback the show’s been getting has been phenomenal.
British reefers can be an introverted, conservative bunch, but Coral Freaks brought us all out of our shells and the expert speakers gave us the injection of passion, entertainment, and involvement we were all secretly looking for.
