54 http://www.ultramarinemagazine.co.uk
the room. Another interesting
thing that I noted is that, unlike
in the States, female reefers
were more prominent and in
greater numbers in England
than they are the rest of Europe,
where the number of women
in the hobby is pretty close to
the numbers in the States. In
an unofficial poll that I saw, the
number of female reefers may
be as high as 20% in England,
which is significantly higher
than any other place I have
visited or in the States. I do not
have an explanation for this.Lastly, one of the other
significant differences that I
saw between the US and the
European countries is in the
shops. While there, I rarely came
across what I would consider
a large shop and there are no
“Big Box” stores like there are in
the States. Each town seem-
ingly had its own shop and
the cities all have several good
shops. Unfortunately, here in
the States, due to competition
from the internet, these small
local shops are on the decline
with more and more of them
going out of business rapidly.
The shops I visited through-
out Europe were generally all
very clean and organised and
each of the owners I met were
all very passionate about the
hobby. Most of them were fam-
ily run, as used to be the case
in the States, and had been in
business for a number of years.
Actually, due to the high cost of
space in Europe, virtually every
nook and cranny in these shops
were full of equipment or tanks.
Like most of the shops in the
States, each also had a display
tank to show-off not only the
corals they wanted to sell (and
many sold corals directly out
of these tanks, unlike in the
States), and they were also
designed to showcase the latest
equipment or the equipment
that the owner especially liked.
Some of these tanks showed off
their SPS collection, but many
more showed off soft corals
instead. I should note that notA top down shot of a US tank lit exclusively with LED lights and the colonies were all grown from fragsA shop tank in Europe showing a mix of corals that are mostly brown and where little blue light is used