Being "remote" there is 3 ways to get coral or fish where I live:
1) Contact a LFS down south that has good experience with direct airport shipping, ask for pictures of stock, get prices of stock, organise cost of airplane ticket for items (faint at the price), contact local fisheries and organise an import permit, tell LFS down south to book the items onto the plane and then meet it at the airport after the plane lands to pick it up (after chucking a sickie as it is during business hours of course).
2) We are very lucky to have a coral collector who ships amazing local stock world wide based in our area. These guys are awesome and allow locals to come and buy a few bits from them as they know we don't have anywhere to buy from up here.
3) We have some weird fisheries laws here. We cannot sell any livestock without a very expensive license (not even frags of our own coral or fish we breed ourselves) and if we do very heavy penalties apply, we can only give livestock away for free. However hobbyists are allowed to collect from local waters for display aquariums only. This allows collection of coral and reef fish as long as it is not in a marine park.
I have ordered fish using method #1 once and while easy enough is very expensive with airport to airport shipping (our "overnight" shipping is 3-5 days). I have gotten 90% of my coral via method #2 as the quality of stock really just cant compare to anything else. However if I have a day off during a king low tide I like to have a look out on one of the local reefs, I usually come back with some coral but most of all I just like having a look.
So here is my "LFS"
Tides in my area range from 0.1m - 8m. This is a massive variance and while those are on the extreme end of the scale the "king low tides" occur usually once a month. For most of the year they are at night time, but the last few months of the year they usually fall around lunch time. These low tides leave a few reefs exposed. Most of the coral ends up sitting for 2-3 hours in shallow tide pools (where the temperature sits around 30+ degrees Celsius) but a surprising amount of coral is fully exposed in direct sun and heat for an hour or so.
I really like having a look around these reefs at low tide and have seen some truly impressive things. 99% of the coral is either brown or green and really isn't worth talking about at all. It is different almost every time I go out but some highlights are:
Epaulette sharks, fully out of the water and hiding under coral structures
A carpet ameone that was well over 0.5m diameter closed up (must have been huge when open)
Clown fish, damsels, butterfly fish, angel fish, gobies, blennies, eels etc
Tongue fungia coral the size of my fore arm and plate fungia coral bigger than dinner plates
This most recent trip (just over a week ago) was fairly uneventful however I found a couple of bits of coral I decided to bring home. They are really terrible photos but they will do for now, when they are all settled and I mount them in place I will try to get better photos.
I got a small bit of what I think is a green encrusting Montipora (right) as I wanted to see how it went in my tank, unfortunately it bleached entirely in a couple of days. On the left is a piece of what I think is some kind of green branching Montipora, I haven't mounted it to the rock yet but is still alive and should be mounted tomorrow.
Next is a favia that had some interesting splotching on it. It is a fairly dull aqua and the splotches are all brown or rust colored however I liked the pattern and I am interested to see if I can get it to colour up at all.
I also picked up a small lobo, I got one of these about a year ago which has now gotten a really nice colour on it so I am keen to see how this one goes too.
There is quite a bit of brown chalice coral out there but I found this green one with some brown/red patches on it. It has started getting a bit of tissue recession around the rim so I will be mounting it tomorrow and hopefully I can put it in a place where it can recover and thrive.
Last I found 2 Moseleya latistellata "Moon coral". One is more brown but looks very red under sunlight so I am also hoping it colours up well and the other is just a nice green. I had 2 of these corals (both green and both collected from the same spot) before that were doing well but unfortunately both got overrun with algae and died.
Some nice PE from some of them after they settled in.
