Sept 6

The alarm went off today but we turned it off lol
Pete missed the first few talks so we went to grab some breakfast at Duncan's before getting in some shopping at Dirks in the exhibit hall.
We came across a few looking somewhat the worse for wear after last night lol
We made sure to say goodbye to Matt Pederson who gave us another heap of Coral Mags. We chatted to a few others and Michelle grabbed us to introduced us to Ret Talbots wife Karen who promptly invited us to visit for a meal when in Maine which will be nice.
We got chatting to the Monsoon Aquatics boys and sort of pleaded our case for them to resume selling to us and ignore the other shops that whinge if they do sell to us. We felt we maybe made some headway but only time will tell.
We finally got out of the hall in time for the last half of a talk by Todd Gardiner.
on fish found in NY. I ditched the last little bit of it to go back and grab a box of freebie reef keeping mags.
magazines which we hand out as freebies to customers.
I got back in time to join Pete for the talk by Ret Talbot about data keeping which was great. It was all about how we all need to have actual facts to counter the anti-aquarium lobby when they make outrageous claims like saying there were over 400,000 clown fish imported to the USA when the data proved it was under 50,000 and many of those were tank bred not wild caught! He's a very knowledgable guy and we are really looking forward to catching up with them in Maine.
After Ret it was Lyal from Cairns Marine on coral collection with a fair bit of propaganda thrown in to try and get support for sustainable collectors.
We had a bit of time before we caught up with Kevin and his crew so went to replenish the alcohol supplies and had a couple with Tim from Triton UK in the foyer.
We want to the local noodle place for dinner with Kevin and this years scholarship winners which was fun although the food was average :-( then back to the bar where loads more were already ensconced. As we entered the bar we got summonsed by Tony Vargas to be introduced to a couple of people he was talking to. Once we broke away we joined the MASNA crew for what turned out to be another fun night.
We started playing cards so Pete, not a cards fan, went off to talk to Tim, Vincent and a few other guys. We started playing go fish which we all thought was pretty funny given we are fish nuts lol it soon degenerated into a game of bulls*** which was hilarious.
The bar shut at midnight and the cleaners moved in about 2.30 so we got moved out into the foyer area where we hooked up with another crew of US and Canadian distributors. They had a carton of beer they needed to get gone before they leave in the morning so that saved going up to the room every time to get a drink! I crashed out and left Pete to it about 3 and he got up to the room a little after 4.30.