Why is this event a one day event ?

One of our main goals in planning this event was to keep costs low and pass these savings onto our vendors and attending aquarists. We also wanted to simplify our planning and managing requirements. As this event grows, we may eventually expand the event to occur over a saturday and sunday, but a 2 day event presents numerous logistical problems for the coral farming vendors that we have not even begun to address.

Why is this event on a saturday ?

One of the main attractions for attending this event is that there will be a few farming vendors from Southern California and the Bay Area setting up booths and distributing their corals. By scheduling the event on Saturday, these vendors have the option to next day their corals into the area. The vendors can then catch a friday nite plane flight and arrive into Portland late friday.

Is the Bay Area Coral Farmers Market competing with the MACNA conference, IMAC Conference, MAX Conference or another future Western Marine Conference ?

Definitly not. One of the factors in choosing the date of our event was that the date could not interfer with other major events within the captive industry. The MACNA, IMAC, MAX and future Western Marine conferences are large conferences that tend to be speaker orientated conferences. Those conferences have a larger cost structure due to the expense of flying in and accomodating speakers. This is why their booth and ticket charges are much higher then the booth and ticket charges at the NW-CFM. We have kept our costs under strict control and have passed these savings onto our customers. The NW-CFM is exactly what its name describes. A Coral Farmers Market event. As we grow in size from year to year, there may be a point where speakers and presentations are added, but even if we eventually incorporate speakers and presentations into the event, they will always be secondary to the main purpose of the NW-CFM event.

Why do you prefer to sell vendor booths to Coral Farming vendors ?

Our primary attraction is exotic farmed coral. Our customers expect that a very good selection of corals will be available for sale. When we contact potential vendors for booths we always place more effort on getting coral farming vendors to reserve booths. There are however many Mariculture companies that support coral farming indirectly. We typically reserve a large Hotel room for this NW-CFM event and this gives us plenty of vendor booth space. We are expanding our vendor participation and we will be adding more and more non-coral farming vendors as this event grows.

What is the coral used in the background of this web site ?

The image used in the background of this web site is a photo taken by Steve Tyree of the Idaho Grape Montipora undata coral. This coral originated from GARF of Boise Idaho in 2002. Steve acquired his fragment from a private collecting coral farmer in Boise Idaho. Steve personally carried his fragment of this coral all the way back to Southern California in the year 2003. The exotic grape colored coral has been widely distributed throughout the Pacific Northwest area.

What is the coral used on the right side of the top web logo and on event tickets ?

That coral is the famous Oregon Tort. It is one of the oldest Acropora tortuosa corals that have been maintained within captive systems. It was originally grown by captive aquarists within the Oregon area and has been widely distributed. This particular image was taken by Hugo Zuniga (snipersps) and this coral was grown by Hugo and was being maintained within his captive reef tank. Steve Tyree post processed the image and extracted the coral from Hugo's image.