It’s hard to believe that our Azorean boss, Rui Guedes, was sharing his early Google Sketchup diagrams with us as we flew to the Regional Aquatics Workshop in Columbus, back in May 2019. From those we evolved to Auto Cad, then Inventor, and then… the drawings became real first in Coimbra, then Cantanhede, and finally in Peniche.

But they certainly didn’t stop there, and we took them all the way to Al Hoceima in the beginning of June, and then to Stockholm in the end of June. That’s right, our Mobile Station drove fish over 10.000 km in its first month and, while we moved well over 1.000 animals, we sadly lost… 3, after they arrived to their spectacular new home.

That is definitely one aspect of this business we will never get used to, and that is the simple truth that, sometimes, sh#t happens. The good news is that this new piece of brilliant equipment will help us minimize those unfortunate moments to the absolute minimum.

Proof of that is the Mobile Station’s very first weekend, May 30 until June 1^st in Seville, where the team experienced… 47 degrees Celsius! And guess what the water temperature was throughout the whole stay in Seville? A very comfortable 18 degrees, which means the animals weren’t even aware of the blaze scorching all the staff outside the container.

Anyway, we’re very thankful to DGPM for their visit, but mostly for their unwavering support over these last 5,5 years. We literally couldn’t have done this without you, and we look forward to submitting another (crazier!) proposal and working with your splendid staff again!

#letsdothis!

#EEAGrants #EEAGrantsPT #EEANorwayGrants #CrescimentoAzul #BlueGrowth #DGPM

PS – Thank you for the lovely pics!

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Check out the video of our closing event on April 30 and prepare to be dazzled with the most AMAZING fish transport unit in the Galaxy!

Funded by the EEA and Norway Grants and EEA Grants Portugal, powered by DGPM – Direção-Geral de Política do Mar.

#eeagrantspt #EEAGrantsPT #EEANorwayGrants #CrescimentoAzul #BlueGrowth #dgpm

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As we get closer and closer to finishing this state-of-the-art live fish transport 40′ container, we took the opportunity that we were welcoming 170 aquarium professionals in Horta, during this year’s scientific conference of the European Union of Aquarium Curators, and held a Workshop on the subject.

After all, it’s important that our aquarium friends know that Flying Sharks will be able to move all their animals under exquisite conditions within a few months!

Needless to say that none of this would be possible without the support from our friends at the Directorate-General for Maritime Policy and EEA Grants.

#EEAGrants #EEAGrantsPT #EEANorwayGrants #CrescimentoAzul #BlueGrowth #DGPM

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Such was the case when we received our gorgeous filters from Sager+Mack, protein skimmer from Tropical Marine Centre, ultraviolet disinfector from Ultraaqua, and powerful filtration pumps from Abyzz.

The next step will be to test them all thoroughly and, finally, assembly of our impressive Mobile Station will begin.

It’s hard to believe that we’re only six months away from completing this exciting three years project, but the real fun will begin after, when we start moving sharks, rays and teleosts all over the world in it!

#eeagrants #eeagrantspt #eeagrantsportugal #bluegrowth #crescimentoazul #dgpm

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Damn, we’ve been so incredibly busy that we have a months long backlog of cool non-posted stuff, but our good friends from WIREDmkt are giving us a hand catching up on things!

We just got back from this year’s International Aquarium Congress 2022, beautifully hosted by our friends from Nausicaá, where we now delivered animals at least a dozen times, which is why seeing our good friend Stéphane Henard again was such a treat!

We did no less than three presentations:

1) A New Paradigm in Fish Transport where we bragged about our awesome ‘Mobile Station’, currently under construction in Coimbra, powered by our friends from the  EEA Grants Portugal.

2) Veterinarian Hands Across the Atlantic Ocean, where we partnered with our Brazilian friends from Oceanic Aquarium and gave a detailed report on the pair of Carcharias taurus we moved from New York to São Paulo by air, in the middle of the pandemic, and then by road to Balneário Camboriú, 660 kilometers – and 20 hours – south. We then returned last Summer for some cool veterinarian exams and shared every detail with the audience.

3) Rhina ancylostoma: a most complex transport, for all the wrong reasons! For this presentation we partnered with Nicolas Hirel from Planet Ocean and shared a detailed account of an extremely difficult transport of one very large Rhina ancylostoma from Montpellier to Madrid by road, then to Gran Canaria inside a chartered Boeing 737, which flew back with four captive bred Stegosotma fasciatum, that were later flown (from Lisbon) to Vienna and Budapest.

But the highlight of this meeting was introducing our friends from Techaquarium to our (many!) aquarium friends, and guess where they are now?? Using their kickass residue-free acrylic polishing technology (you can see everything on Youtube) at none other then the almighty Den Bla Planet Aquarium in Copenhagen, with a second contract already signed with Sea Life Blankenberge for January. Not bad, for a company that’s not even one semester old!

In summary, we had an amazing time at the International Aquarium Congress this year and we hope to welcome you all to the Azores, for EUAC 2023.

You can read all our news here: Our Blog – Flying Sharks!

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Needless to say we couldn’t ourselves and had to brag a bit about our phenomemal Mobile Station, powered by the Portuguese Maritime General-Directorate and the EEA Grants.

Check out below the tremendously complex work our very own Rui Guedes, Head of Azorean operations and a true Marine Biologist – both on paper and at heart -, while he kicks some serious engineering ass in our Mobile Holding Station, under construction in Coimbra, in our partner DKM’s backyard.

#EEAGrants #EEAGrantsPT #EEANorwayGrants #CrescimentoAzul #BlueGrowth #DGPM

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It took us a loooong time to select the perfect semi-new unit, but we finally found it! We could, of course, have bought a brand new one, but these things cost 50.000 euros, so we went for a used one. But we had to make positively sure it was in perfect operational condition!

We take this time to thank our friends from Comecont, who put up with our thousands of questions and visits! The good news is that we used those trips to introduce Nikola to the wonderful world of industrial sized forklifts!

#EEAGrants #EEAGrantsPT #EEANorwayGrants #CrescimentoAzul #BlueGrowth #DGPM

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Additionally, for years we’ve been delivering lectures on Sharks, Careers, Climate Change, and basically trying to inspire young students, and professionals of all ages, to pursue their dreams relentlessly!

It is therefore no surprise that we gave no less than three different lectures in March!

1. We encouraged Marine Biology students from ESTM to pursue their dream careers and shared countless tips on how to get there fast(er)… (Spoiler alert: there’s no such thing as a free lunch… 😉 )
2. We then chatted to Business and Management students from ESTG on how to grow their business, highlighting the “dos” and “don’ts” that will either make your idea soar… Or run it into the ground… (*)
3. We finally lectured on the perils Humankind is facing, after 150 years of diligently pulling carbon from the ground and throwing it into the atmosphere, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 4 weeks per month, 12 months per year, decade, after decade, after decade… For this we, of course, donned our Loving the Planet shirt.

For more information on our lectures, check out this video and/or email us.

(*) Needless to say we had to brag a big about our kickass Mobile Holding Station, which received generous half a million funding from the EEA Grants, brilliantly managed by the Directorate-General for Maritime Policy.

#EEAGrants #EEAGrantsPT #EEANorwayGrants #CrescimentoAzul #BlueGrowth #DGPM

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Needless to say that we couldn’tlet an opportunity like this go by without bragging about our phenomenal Mobile Holding Station, powered by EEA Grants Portugal and the General Marine Policy Directorate.

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And it’s been DECADES since we’ve been to a “new” conference, where we know very few people.

We (and that includes Ninucha ) were therefore extremely surprised to run into so many familiar – and friendly – faces at #AquacultureEurope2021!

While giving a presentation on recent advances in live fish transports, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to explain how we plan to move these transports into the future with our phenomenal “Mobile Holding Station”, currently under construction with the assistance of EEA Grants Portugal and DGPM – Direção-Geral de Política do Mar.

Many thanks Sandra Isabel and Cátia Marques Afonso for the cool photos and awesome dinners!

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