Reef-A-Palooza
Orange County
Fair Grounds
Costa Mesa, CA

 

Anthony Calfo
Anthony Calfo was born in Hawaii and lives in Pennsylvania. He is a lifelong aquarist and an aquarium industry professional that has worked the better part of the last decade as a commercial coral farmer and wholesaler, producing cultured reef invertebrates in a greenhouse environment for the ornamental and zoological trade.

Anthony has authored the reef aquarium books, "Book of Coral Propagation, Volume 1" (ReadingTrees.com) & “Reef Invertebrates”, and numerous articles for print and electronic journals at large. He travels frequently to visit organizations and clubs to present information on the aquatic sciences. Anthony co-founded the Pittsburgh Marine Aquarist Society with the inimitable Bob Dolan. Schooled at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, he has degree in English Literature.

Bob Fenner
Robert (Bob) Fenner is a content provider to the pet-fish (ornamental) aquatics hobby and trade, dive/travel adventure and underwater natural history genres; writing, photography and videography. Though retired since 1994, he continues to produce in this field as well as consult on aquaculture and public aquarium installations. Bob has "lived" the science, hobby and business of aquatics in the Philippines, Japan and United States. All phases; collector, wholesale, jobber, retail, design, construction and maintenance. All levels; manager, owner, hatchery worker, retail clerk, technician. Except for a stint teaching high school sciences for four years, he has worked all his life in the field of ornamental aquatics. Academic experience includes fifteen years of college, a couple of life science degrees and a teaching credential for chemistry, physics and biology. Published works include several studies on aquatic biological and chemical questions, and an extensive book and article publishing (helped author a few books, The Conscientious Marine Aquarist, Fishwatcher's Guide to the Tropical Marine Aquarium Fishes of the World, Natural Marine Aquariums Reef Invertebrates...) and photographic background in aquatic industry and hobby fields. Have taught High School sciences and Marine Sciences and Aquariology courses at the State University, University of California levels. Bob has been an avid aquatic hobbyist since day one and is active in hobbyist and scientific organizations. He has served on numerous Boards, judged shows and given many programs. Helped form and run (President) of the employee-owned corporation, Nature Etc., Inc. in San Diego, started in 1973; a turn-key operation in the field of ornamental aquatics, designing and building ponds, lakes, fountains and waterfalls (Aquatic Environments), designing, installing custom aquarium systems and maintenance (Aquatic Life Services), and operating retail outlets (Wet Pets).... currently does consulting, content provision to the trade, sciences and hobby of aqu aristics.

Charles Delbeek
Charles Delbeek graduated from the University of Toronto in 1981 with an honors bachelor's degree in biology, a master's in zoology in 1986 and a bachelor's in education in 1986. After enduring one winter too many in his native Toronto, he moved to Hawaii and took a position with the Waikiki Aquarium in the spring of 1995. He has been caring for marine organisms in closed systems for over 30 years. His professional interests include the ecology and captive husbandry of marine fishes, corals, aquatic plants and cephalopods. In the summer of 2008 Charles accepted a position as senior aquatic biologist at the California Academy of Sciences' Steinhart Aquarium, soon to reopen on September 27th, 2008 in Golden Gate Park, the highlight of which will be a 220,000 gallon live reef display.

A certified SCUBA diver since the age of 14, Charles has made over 400 dives in locations throughout the world including Canada, Fiji, Hawaii, Indonesia, Japan, south Korea, the Marshall Islands, Palau, the Philippines, the Solomon Islands, the Florida Keys, Bonaire, St. Kitts, Thailand and St. Maartin.

Charles has lectured at over 50 aquarium-related conferences and meetings, chaired several professional conference sessions, and published over 75 articles in the popular aquarium literature in the last 22 years. He served as the moderator of the online Fishnet Marine Aquarium forum on Compuserve from 1987 till 1991. In addition to writing a monthly reef aquarium column for Aquarium Fish Magazine since 1997 and a bi-monthly column for Advanced Aquarist Online, he has co-authored three popular aquarium books with Julian Sprung. The Reef Aquarium was published in 1994, The Reef Aquarium volume 2 was published in 1997, and The Reef Aquarium volume 3 published in 2005, considered by many to be the definitive works in the field.

In addition to his lecturing and writing, Charles has provided consulting services to the Georgia Aquarium, Kerzner International, the California Academy of Sciences, the Long Beach Aquarium, Aquatic Design Group, the Horniman Museum, Lazenby Design Associates, Tenji Inc., Ewah Women's University, Pacific Ecological Systems and Wayne's Ocean World as well as several others.

Jake Adams
http://coralidea.com/
Jake Adams is a professional, practicing aquarist who has been an active participant in the national marine aquarium community for over 10 years. He has been educating aquarists of a wide range of marine aquarium topics through frequent articles, podcasts and presentations around the country and he recently founded Coralidea.com which provides a free downloadable guide to coral identification for mobile devices and home computers. Jake has a Bachelor's Degree in Marine Science and he will be returning to graduate school to further pursue research in the field of coral reef ecology.

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