Minutes from the General meeting October 16, 2013

Meeting held in Harborside Learning Center
Present: Rick Rosa, Joy Marzolf,Uma Mirani, Dan Sprague, Tiffany Fowlie, Anna Krowczynska , Bob Munson and Greg Pease.

Absent: Steve Whitford , Julia Cichowski and Val Feehan.

Meeting Chaired byRick Rosa and attended by 17 people.

New members:

Among our new members attending this meeting were Tim, just certified brand new diver and Janet who was certified at Dutch Springs few years back and wants get back to diving.

Who has been diving:

Greg did a boat diving with Boston Scuba – first dive was a scallop dive, they landed on a top of a large scallop bed and the second a wreck dive on a restaurant ship that sunk in Boston Harbor during the 1978 North’ester and still is yielding a lot of plates and other artifacts. Ralph came back from his second trip to Galapagos, this time he only snorkeled, but did a lot of land trips on various islands. Jim Carozza, who owns and operates a dive charter on Lake Winnipesaukee, did a few last trips of the season and took the boat out of the water. Rick, Dan and few other club members came back from a very successful trip to Bahamas with a record of 16 dives during the stay there.

Announcements:

Joy – there are 2 spots available on the Bahamas trip in March 2014 on the Dolphin Dream to see hammerheads, lemon sharks, dolphins etc. This is a great trip which is very reasonable priced.

The December General meeting is show and tell, if you want to present, please let Joy know in advance.

Further speakers: January – Jonathan Bird, February – Greg Skomel (if he will be available), March is behind the scenes TBA and April – Les Kaufman.

Elections:

According to our by-laws, we are required to elect officers for the NEADC every year in November. Rick thanked all of the officers who have served this year.

The Board of Directors presented the following slate of officers to serve in 2014:

Rick Rosa, President

Uma Mirani, Vice President

Julia Cichowski, Business Manager

Dan Sprague, Boat Dive Coordinator

Greg Pease, Shore Dive Coordinator

Val Feehan, Newsletter Editor

Joy Marzolf, Program Director

Tiffany Fowlie, Environmental Affairs

Steve Whitford, Webmaster

Anna Krowczynska, Secretary

Bob Munson, Membership Director

NEAq Liaison, Bill Murphy

Rick asked about any nominations from the floor for any officer position. Hearing none Greg proposed motion to close nominations from the floor, seconded by Dan, which passed unanimously. Bob proposed a motion to instruct the secretary to cast one ballot for the slate of officers, motion second by Tiffany passed unanimously. Anna, the Secretary, casted a single ballot for the above officer’s slate.

Seal meet and greet: On Sunday, December 1 winner David Young.

Guest Speaker: Ethan Gordon talked about diving at Coco’s Island. Before the presentation Ethan invited everybody to the 60 annual Sea Rovers meeting in March. Bigger and better than ever because of the anniversary will feature the Historical Diving Society talks and exhibit of the classical dive gear and Brian Skerry as a MC of the film festival among other attractions.

Ethan is an award winning photographer, most recently one of his pictures was named the most popular Sports Diver cover and the last editor of Fathoms Magazine. The Coco’s Island is known from a big fish which Ethan captured on the film, but also showed a lot of smaller animals that he photographed waiting for Mr Big. Cost Rica is a beautiful country promoting eco-tourism and conservation of natural resources, the place which should be on everybody list places to visit.

Meeting adjourned at 8:30

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