IAC & NAC 2024

Damn, this year gave us no quarter, and we’re dreaming of that glorious day when we come home without another (upcoming) trip planned!

Let’s see… on the 27th of October we flew to London, then Dallas, and then Guadalajara, to represent Flying Sharks and www.techaquarium.pt at the International Aquarium Congress, where we gave no less than three presentations:

The first was in partnership with www.westcoastfilms.pt and focused on educational mobile games that can help aquaria, museums, and the like, to convey important information about nature and the oceans in a fun way to their visitors.

The second was themed on the wonderful technique developed by our sister company www.techaquarium.pt to polish acrylic panels without releasing any residue – nor sound – which is taking the aquarium world by storm!

The third recounted one of the most recent Flying Sharks operations, which took us to Poland three times, facing tire punctures, lack of oxygen, and various major issues, all of which were resolved in more or less creative ways.

Once in Guadalajara, we cleverly moved towards the podium after Dr. Sylvia Earle’s brilliant opening keynote address, and we snagged a beautiful selfie with Dr. Earle holding Ninucha, the second we told her that Nikola is a huge fan and we had promised him such a photo! This remarkable woman is not just a force of nature when it comes to protecting the oceans, she’s also one of the kindest humans we’ve ever met.

That same afternoon, we did our presentation on mobile phone games, which caught everyone by surrise! What happens is that Flying Sharks partnered with www.westcoastfilms.pt and www.risingpixel.com and we are now offering educational games to museums/aquaria/etc. around the world, focused on engaging audiences (young and old) on major issues faced by the oceans today.

Climate change, acidification, coral bleeching, habitat loss, microplastics, pollution, overfishing, IUUs, the list of threats is too long to fit here…

But aquaria welcome 500 million visitors every year and mobile games (made by Rising Pixel) get 100 million views per week, so why not merging these two??

That was the focus of the first of our 3 presentations and we received overwhelming support from the hundreds of IAC attendees, with folks flooding our booth to learn more afterwards!

Something tells us we’re gonna be posting a lot more about this new adventure of ours…

On our second day, we puy on our www.techaquarium.pt hat and focused on the importance of polishing acrylic with…

– no noise

– no residue

– a staff who’s experienced in being underwater with live animals

– a staff who’s experienced in interacting with the public while diving

The folks in the audience were quite impressed with the videos showing the impressive amount of residue that our one of a kind system removes, which would otherwise stay in the water!

Day #3 at the International Aquarium Congress beautifully closed with our good friend Beth Firchau’s birthday dinner at La Doceña Oyster Bar. We met Beth in March 1998, during a particularly demanding transport from Florida to the Oceanário de Lisboa. At the time, a certain floridian “collector” seriously dropped the ball and Beth joined us in Punta Gorda to clean up his mess.

But there’s a silver lining behind every challenge, because the monumental hardship in making that shipment get off the ground is what drove us to meet the amazing team of Dynasty Marine, who have inspired us at Flying Sharks to be better and better since we had the privilege to meet and start working with them.

The journal kept during this extremely tough transport was also the reason why the Sex, Sharks and Rock & Roll trilogy was born.

It really is true what they say: “Behind every huge problem, lies huge opportunity.”

The last day in Guadalajara had us delivery the third Flying Sharks presentation, ‘Polska Madness” focused on our three trips to Gdynia, in March, April and August, and the challenges we faced. More importantly, we shared every little detail on how such challenges were overcome.

Later that same day, a wonderful gala dinner closed the 4th and final day of the International Aquarium Congress in Guadalajara, focused on the role public aquaria play in rewilding the world’s oceans. There’s so much to do, and we need everyone’s help.

Meanwhile, it was lovely to see our old friends from Portugal, the U.S.A. and Turkey and we look forward to visiting our friends from the İstanbul Akvaryum next year during the European Union of Aquarium Curators’ meeting.

Shortly arrived from the International Aquarium Congress in Guadalajara, there was only time to enjoy two days of family time, teach a class at Escola Superior de Turismo e Tecnologia do Mar – Politécnico de Leiria and hop on a Ryanair flight to Manchester, so we could attend the BIAZA Ectotherms conference at Drayton Manor with our www.techaquarium.pt partners and do yet another pair of talks!

During our 5 minute-ish Flying Sharks pitch we covered:

…a brief history of Flying Sharks and how we came to be on that distant 1st of September 2006, *18* years ago!

…the wonderful partnership we enjoy with Escola Superior de Turismo e Tecnologia do Mar – Politécnico de Leiria, employing students and providing endless opportunities for on job training!

…our recent partnership with www.techaquarium.pt, our sister company, which is polishing acrylic panels (on both wet and dry sides) with absolutely NO noise and NO residue, as illustrated by the unbelievable videos showing the insane amount of gunk that our filters prevent from going in the water.

…our brand new venture into educational mobile phone serious games focused on conservation efforts! What better way to teach kids about the oceans than having them competing with each other to see who saves more corals??

Our second talk at the BIAZA Ectotherms conference, titled “The Oldest Alliance in the World”, focused on Flying Sharks jobs done in the UK over the years. These included two cool partnerships with our American friends from Dynasty Marine Associates, Inc. and our Australian chums from Cairns Marine.

While the first one had us babysitting four Sandtuger sharks from Heathrow to Blue Planet Aquarium (Chester) and Deep Sea World (Edinburgh), the second, last May, had us follow small Australian tropicals from Heathrow’s Animal Reception Centre to The Deep in Hull.

One would think of Flying Sharks, Dynasty Marine and Cairns Marine as competitors, but the truth is that we collect a rather diverse – and geographically distant – set of species, which means we mostly join efforts in meeting a client’s needs, rather than compete over them.

There’s also the fact that we share the uniqueness of operating in a truly sustainable and 100% traceable fashion, which is why we call ourselves “The Consortium of Sustainability and Goodness”.

Anyway, our talk also covered the impressive job of moving all the aquatic animals from Bristol Zoo Project to both Biotropica en Normandie and L’Oceanogràfic de València two years ago, which tested our administrative and customs clearance skills while crossing the English Channel four times l. This meant eight points of customs clearance and two vet inspections, all of them cleared with flying colors.

We like to think the folks at the BIAZA conference were impressed with our achievements over the years and we look forward to the opportunity of playing in the UK and/or Ireland again soon!

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