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Western Division of the American Fisheries Society
EXCOM Teleconference Minutes
Date: January 29, 2002

Participants:   Eric Knudsen, Tom McMahon, Monica Hiner, Steve Elle, Don MacDonald, Allen Bingham, Dave Zafft, David Manning, Bill Bradshaw

Annual 2001 WDAFS Retreat

  • The minutes from last year's annual retreat have been drafted and sent to Executive Committee members.  A quorum was not present, so we could not approve the minutes.  Hopefully we can approve the minutes during the February conference call.
  • Eric submitted an article to Fisheries about our retreat, but hasn't heard back from the parent society.

2002 Annual Meeting Update—Don MacDonald

  • Five plenary sessions are planned and all keynote speakers have been selected.
  • The budget for the annual meeting has been modified to $265,000, of which we have raised $105,000 and anticipate receiving $105,000 in registration fees.
  • Deadline for abstracts is January 28th and we have already received over 300 abstracts.
  • The WDAFS Executive Committee meeting will be held from 5-8pm Sunday evening (April 28th) in the Parkside Room (DoubleTree Hotel).  The WDAFS Annual Business meeting will be held Tuesday morning over breakfast.  The keynote speaker will be Ken Beal, current president of the parent society, who will speak about partnership building.
  • Deadline for adding contributors to the program is March 15th.  The Division will also advertise the 2003 annual meeting in the program (in addition to distributing flyers at the meeting).

2003 Annual Meeting—Tom McMahon

  • Tom McMahon and Dave Manning went to San Diego at the end of December and toured several potential meeting locations.  They decided that the Hyatt was the best location and blocked out 350 rooms (150 @ $99.00, 200 @ 129.00).
  • The meeting will be held April 14-17, 2003.
  • The offsite event will be held at the Scripps Busch Aquarium, which is a 15-minute drive.  The potential date for the event is April 16th.
  • Planning for the meeting is really coming together, and it was agreed that Tom and Dave should move ahead with the planning and give monthly reports on the progress.  Tom is chairing the Program Committee and Dave Manning is the chair of the Local Arrangements Committee.  Eric joined the Program committee.  Mark Brouder (Arizona-New Mexico) is also on the committee.
  • Eric recently visited La Paz Baja and met with approximately ten fisheries scientists who are very excited about attending the San Diego meeting.  This will hopefully build the Division's relationship with Mexican fisheries professionals.
  • Eric also went to the Ocean Salmon meeting (NMFS) in Santa Cruz and asked if they were interested in co-convening in 2003 with the Western Division and California-Nevada Chapter in San Diego but the response was not very positive.
  • Proceeds from the San Diego meeting will be discussed in more detail with the Cal-Neva chapter at their annual 2002 meeting in Lake Tahoe (Tom will attend).

2004 Time and Place Committee—Eric Knudsen

  • The World Fisheries Congress responded to our letter—they offered to let us participate, but not to keep the first $10,000 since it is not our annual meeting.
  • Eric will draft a letter stating that we (WDAFS) would like to sponsor a session through Pete Bisson and have a booth, but that we will not raise any funds or require any funds.
  • The WDAFS Annual Meeting will likely co-convene with the Bonneville and Colorado-Wyoming Chapters in Utah (Park City?).

Mid-Year Governing Board Meeting (March 15-16)

  • Eric and Tom will attend the meeting.  On March 15th, Eric will stand in at the Management Committee meeting for Don.  Tom will stand in for Don at the March 16th Governing Board meeting.
  • Action items that the WDAFS will propose:
      • Lower rates for online Fisheries subscriptions for NA residents—currently the rate for non-NA residents is lower than NA residents.
      • Propose a 3-day annual meeting instead of 3-½ day meeting.
      • Propose that the WDAFS receive 10% of the net proceeds when we co-convene with the parent society for our annual meeting in 2005.

New Ad Hoc Committees

  • Annual Finance Committee—David Cowley chair.  Goal:  Raise $15,000 for the WDAFS Annual Business meeting (breakfast).
  • Electronic Communications Committee—Alan Bingham chair.
  • Newsletter Committee—Mary Whalen chair.

Newsletter

  • The January issue was eliminated, but we would like to get another good newsletter out by mid-March.  Submissions are due by February 15th and nominations are due by March 1st.  Ballots for this year's elections will be included in the newsletter.
  • It was suggested that we drop our association with BYU (our current printer) to decrease the time it takes to get the newsletter out.  Don has information on a print shop in Seattle and will get that information to Eric. 
  • The format of the newsletter will be changed from newsprint to 11 x 17 paper folded in half (8 total pages).

Grants Funding

  • Eric proposed that we adopt a procedure for purchasing stocks and mutual funds through our Charles Schwab account.  A quorum was not present, but everyone on the call agreed on the procedure and Eric later contacted the Hawaii, Humboldt, Arizona-New Mexico, Alaska, Colorado-Wyoming, and Idaho chapters and received affirmation for the procedure. 
  • It was agreed that we should set up our Charles Schwab account with some funds from our savings account ($25,000 initially).

Ocean Committee Meeting Hearings

  • Eric will contact all coastal Chapters and try to get 1-2 people per Chapter to represent AFS in regional Ocean Committee hearings, which will take place during the summer of 2002.

CAS 2005 Annual Meeting

  • The Council of Aquatic Sciences contacted Eric about co-convening our annual meeting in June 2005 with them in Portland.  This meeting will be high visibility, and although we are already planning a separate 2005 Annual Meeting it was suggested that we co-sponsor the meeting. 

Our next conference call will be Tuesday, February 19th