Our May Meeting, which is our Annual General Meeting will be held at the Conservation Centre, 120 Wakefield Street, Adelaide on Wednesday 19^th May commencing at 7.30pm.

We will start with the Meeting and elections followed by a break.

Our speaker will be Caroline Wilson who will discuss her seastar studies. The seastar she chose is only found in South Australia and is the smallest to be found here.

2004 Annual General Meeting

Adelaide Shell Show

Port Broughton pictorial report

AGM reports

This month our authors are Philip Hall, Steve Reynolds, David Muirhead and Chris Hall.

There being only the required number of nominations for the Executive positions an election will not be needed.

The nominations will, however, need to be accepted by the meeting.

Nominations for the Non-executive positions detailed below can be made from the floor at the meeting.

The Malacological Society of South Australia hosted the National Shell Show in Adelaide from March 20^th to the 21^st.

MLSSA was invited to run a small stall to publicise the Society.

Margaret and I set it up on Friday afternoon after collecting a display stand from the Conservation Council (CCSA).

Steve Reynolds and David Muirhead ran the stall and talked to visitors on Saturday, and Chris Hall and Neville Skinner did the same on Sunday morning and during the early afternoon. Margaret and I took over in the afternoon and then dismantled the display at the end. We had to return the display board to the CCSA on the following Tuesday.

The show was very well attended and the competitive displays were impressive. I must admit that, personally, the volume of shells being sold by the commercial dealers worried me.

We spent some time talking to the two Wildlife Trade officers from Canberra who were seated alongside us.

The Show was very good for MLSSA from other aspects. We had several people wanting to get membership and meeting information, found possible speakers, but most pleasingly during the show we sold 19 calendars with some enquiries for the 2005 calendar.

CCSA - Conservation Council of South Australia

DEH - Department for the Environment and Heritage

KI - Kangaroo Island

PI - Photographic Index

JOTS - Jewels of the Sea

2003-2004 has been another good year for MLSSA with many notable events.

I would first of all like to thank many people. I hate to single out individuals or organisations in case I miss anyone but here goes, not in any special order:-

Firstly, thank you to my wife Margaret for all your encouragement, good advice, assistance and for coming along to all General and Committee meetings.

A joint thankyou to Chris Hall and David Muirhead for your contributions at Committee meetings, specifically for your hospitality in providing meeting venues and refreshments, but especially for the photographs you provide for the Photo Index, the Calendar and for showing at meetings.

Steve Reynolds has to be thanked for his constant supply of Newsletter and Journal articles, clear and precise meeting minutes and agendas, the excellent speakers he finds and especially for his attention to the Photo Index. Few, apart from Steve and myself, realise how much time and effort the PI takes.

Phill McPeake has an extremely demanding full-time job and still finds time to do the Society Accounts, produce the Calendar, print the Newsletters and Journals, attend meetings and give advice and guidance on a wide variety of subjects.

Without Danny Gibbins we would have a very difficult time maintaining the website. He is also the genius who colour balance the calendar pictures and does some cosmetic surgery on them when necessary.

MLSSA gets special attention during the production of the calendar because of Geoff Prince. He spends many extra hours working on correcting the calendar and creating publicity posters for it, and pictures for laminating for displays.

The CCSA has provided us with a meeting place and a post box for many years. The staff is always friendly and helpful. Special thanks to Robyn at the front desk and Peta for their unfailing good humour and assistance.

A thankyou must go to the individual MLSSA members who attend meetings - for your support. I am sure the quality of the speakers does encourage you to come along.

Finally I would like to thank those MLSSA members who silently support MLSSA with their fees just by becoming members.

Now I would like to move onto specific areas that have attracted attention my this year.

The 2004 calendar was a joy to produce because of the assistance given by the Committee, Danny and Geoff. I feel the added laminating of the cover was a further improvement to what is already a fantastic advertisement for the Society, the State and the marine life in the Gulf.

Full membership of CCSA was achieved in December 2003. Thank you Phill and Steve for presenting our case so well.

Newsletters were produced on a regular basis partly because of the supply of articles from Steve, David and Chris. I have however had to source items from interstate and overseas to fill spaces and hope that more members will supply items for both the monthly Newsletter and the 2004 Journal. The quality of articles has been splendid. Phill is again to be thanked for the printing of the publications and Jenny Clapson on KI for her support with the postage costs of the Newsletter.

The 2003 Journal was the largest yet with a very wide variety of splendid articles. I thank the Coromandel Valley School for their assistance with the stapling of the Journal each year.

Meetings have been well attended. We often get visitors, some of whom join the Society. The quality of the speakers has been excellent. A big thankyou should again go to the CCSA for providing such a splendid central meeting place.

The Website is fairly well visited and has resulted in new memberships, enquiries as to photograph availability and has been praised through several emails. The PI on the website has expanded and will continue to be a valuable resource. The Newsletters and Journals continue to be uploaded for all to read. The only downside was the increasing number of spam emails, which necessitated the changing of our edress.

Reefwatch and MLSSA now have a reef out from Hallett Cove to keep an eye on. This will hopefully encourage more diving within the Society though there is much difficulty with access from the rock platform.

Diving has been a sporadic affair this year. It is being conducted on a friend/partner basis because of the difficulty over insurance. We have dived at Hallett Cove (see above) and for the Cleanup Australia Day at Port Broughton. David and Chris conduct their own diving programmes in the pursuit of that elusive "perfect" image.

Cleanup Day was not well attended by the Society. Those who did turn up appeared to have enjoyed themselves. See Pages 8 and 9 for a photographic record courtesy of Phill and Barbara McPeake.

The JOTS Kits, which are housed at the Norwood Education Centre, have been well used. The Puppet Kit is always out. The others are reliant on the time of year for their issue to schools. Term 4 is when they are most used because of the better weather for beach visits. Very little has had to be replaced due to damage or loss.

The Photo Index has continued to expand and has been used quite frequently by the DEH and other organisations. It is heavily reliant on Danny for the uploading of images. Steve has worked hard on the images provided by David and Chris to update the Index.

The Shell Show was well attended and MLSSA members set up and manned a display. A full report is on Page 4 of this Newsletter.

All in all a good year and I hope MLSSA will continue to grow and assist with the conservation of our local waters.

The last twelve months were another exciting year for our Society. Some of the highlights of the year were our participation in the recent Australian National Shell Show. (See the report on Page 4 – Ed.), a clean up dive and a Reef Watch monitoring dive at Hallett Cove.

We did the clean up dive at the Port Broughton jetty. Four of our members made the trip to Port Broughton to join the Gawler Scuba Club in their annual cleanup dive. (See the picture montage on Pages 8 and 9 – Ed.).

We had a slightly better turnout for the monitoring dive at the Hallett Cove reef. Five members participated on the day, but this included two of the organizers. We were joined by a few divers from other clubs. We all featured on a TV news service.

Our Society successfully changed our Associate membership with the Conservation Council of SA to Full Membership. Phill McPeake and I gave a presentation to the Council for our application.

We have lobbied for protection of White Pointer Sharks, Grey Nurse Sharks and the Great Barrier Reef. We have also lobbied against the pollution of Eight Mile Creek and made submissions towards issues such as the Fisheries Act Review.

Work has continued on our normal projects such as our Photo Index, web site, calendars, library and JOTS. Our Editor, Philip Hall, has ensured the publication of monthly Newsletters and another annual Journal. By the time that you read this report, Philip would have been our Editor for a full seven years. Phill McPeake has assisted Philip all that time by printing the Newsletters and Journals. Jenny Clapson continued to provide financial support for our newsletter.

The calendar production team came up with yet another great calendar of SA marine life (for 2004).

Philip Hall and Danny Gibbins kept updating and improving our web site.

Philip also oversees the JOTS kits.

The Photo Index continues to be a good resource and is a feature of our web site.

I organized most of the guest speakers for the year. Our guest speakers included Tim Hoile, Sean Connell, Chris Daniels, Andrew Dalgetty, Ian Whittington, Don Staniford, Robert Browne, Troy Jantzen, Brian Deggar and Troy Ristic (from Native Fish Australia) and Greg Rouse. Society members such as Neville Skinner, Ben Brayford, David Muirhead and Chris Hall gave presentations of their own at some of our meetings. My thanks go to all of these speakers. Whilst looking to the future, we have provided assistance to the SA Maritime Museum for their forthcoming dolphin display, which is due to open at the end of May.

In June this year we will celebrate our 28^th anniversary. Our newsletter will then be 28 years old in July.

My thanks go to everyone who has assisted our Society in any way in the past year.

I am looking forward to the next twelve months serving our Society in any way that I can.

Our Photo Index of SA Marine Life continues to grow in size and stature. David Muirhead continues to provide most of the slides but Chris Hall is starting to gain ground. The Index is a good resource and also assists with our calendar production. Philip Hall, David Muirhead and Danny Gibbins have been instrumental in having the Index put on to our web site. My thanks go to everyone who has assisted with the Photo Index in any way during the past year.

Our library also continues to grow in size and stature just like our Photo Index. It too is a good resource like the Index. The SDF are now passing material on to us for inclusion in our library.

I continued to represent our Society at SDF meetings. I managed to attend most of the meetings held. I still hold the position of Secretary for the SDF. As Secretary, I wrote an article about the Rapid Bay jetty for the Australasia Scuba Diver magazine. It was published recently in the #1/2004 issue. I email copies of each SDF news sheet and meeting minutes and agendas to our members. The Federation’s AGM will be held in July.

2003-2004 has been another good year for MLSSA from my point of view.

Again my photo is on the cover of this years calendar along with two other photos which I’m very proud of. I’m also pleased to say that the sale of the calendars has gone very well despite a slow start.

The guest speakers this year have been excellent, providing great variety and were all very informative. Thanks Steve for getting good speakers with such varying topics.

We have also become full members of the Conservation Council, so I can now vote legally at future meetings. I am a little disappointed with the Con. Council, as the meetings are not as interesting as they used to be. There seems to be lots of debate over points of order and people putting unnecessary motions to Council. There also seems to be a lack of concern over things marine.

We’ve also been involved in conservation issues, which pleases me greatly especially the Ewens Ponds drainage problem. Thanks to Neville for alerting us to the damage being done to this pristine area used by tourists and divers alike.

MLSSA has also been involved in Reefwatch’s adopt a reef. Having selected Hallett Cove reef we conducted our first survey in early December. It was well attended and most people involved were surprised there was so much there, although badly degraded.

Again we were involved in Clean Up Australia Day although it was not well attended by MLSSA and I was one of the culprits. I think for some Port Broughton was a little too far away and that next year we should look for somewhere closer to hand.

The Malacological Society hosted the national shell show and MLSSA had a stand. There seemed to be quite a lot of interest from collectors and visitors to our stand where we managed to sell a number of calendars. So thankyou to those that gave up their precious time to look after the stand.

Thanks to the rest of the committee for all its hard work and to Margaret who ably assists us.

I wish all the members a successful 2004/2005 and that MLSSA continues to educate and enlighten the general public on South Australian marine life.

Fish be damned! They swim in algae, often feed in algae, and yet most of us have, till recently, ignored the algae. Yep, this is another of my wake-up calls! All those attractively shaped, patterned and coloured fishes I’ve been frying with my flash have, it seems, had a simple, sneaky and regrettable goal – that being to distract us from admiring the beauty of our temperate algae. But now I’ve seen the light, there’s no turning back. (Who was it that said ‘Open thine eyes and thou shall see’?!) Please watch the Photo Index for more and better algal piccies… This just about completes my report, as despite buying a ‘Dive Now, Work Later’ T-shirt I’m not practising what I preach – though members listening to me drone on about West Coast Juvenile Blue Groper surveys (courtesy of our patron, ably assisted by James Brook of Reefwatch) and sundry other dives may think I’m exaggerating just a tad.

A final word of praise for the magnificent diving weather and viz this autumn, and accolades for the ‘real’ Committee Members as usual (I always try to disguise my guilt feelings at my own lack of commitment by praising other members, as you’ll have noticed). Yes, another good year indeed.

This will be presented at the Annual General Meeting by Phill.