Welcome to the inaugural issues of Enotes!

I hope Enotes will become the main means of communicating with the section membership. Since all section members have email addresses, and hopefully access to the World Wide Web, the section has the potential to distribute information on a timely and frequent basis without the financial drain associated with publishing and mailing a hardcopy newsletter.

As the new president for the section, my main goal overall is to increase communication with section membership. Enotes is one leg of a 3 pronged approach to achieve this goal. The other two legs are a new section web page (see below), and plans to produce a printed brochure describing the section, its goals and objectives and current activity. Plans are to use the brochure to bolster increased section membership.

Enotes is an experiment, so please let me know what you think of it. My plan is to provide short blurbs of section activity in Enotes, complement Enotes with a more comprehensive description and background information on section activity on the section web page, and to include in each issue of Enotes a section with (hopefully) interesting international fisheries developments gleaned from internet news feeds and information portals. Contributions are most welcome. As always feedback (positive or negative) will be most appreciated.

The section has a new web page!

A web page has been a need of the section for a long time so last spring, while on a research cruise in the Gulf of Alaska, I put one together. You can see it by clicking here. Make sure to add this to your bookmarks.

Posted on the web page is much of the usual section-based material. Of particular note is the compilation of links to major international fisheries research labs, universities, marine science professional societies, and commissions. To my knowledge this is probably one of the more comprehensive lists on the web. Let me know if you see some obvious omissions.

Again, I'd be interested in your impressions.

For almost the past 2 years, the section has been at the forefront of planning for the next World Fisheries Congress. It's gratifying to see the section playing an active and major leadership role in securing the bid for AFS to host the Congress in North America as well as playing a major role in initial planning activity.

You can see a more detailed chronology of the section's involvement by going to the section web page by clicking here or click here to go to a web page summarizing 4th World Fisheries Congress activity.

The section has successfully established the International Endowment Fund. The International Endowment Fund will provide long-term future opportunities for the Society and the International Fisheries Section (IFS) to support international fisheries activities that support the Society's long term international goals. Currently, international members are not subsidized by American Fisheries Society (AFS) dues pass back to Divisions or Chapters. The Endowment Fund is a way to "payback" the international members who have and will continue to support the Society. AFS members have wanted for many years to provide a source of funding support for international activities. This fund will help the Society meet its Strategic Plan goals for international programs.

At the 3rd World Fisheries Congress the International Fisheries Section Executive Committee voted to contribute $1,000 to start the fund. The IFS presented a proposal to establish the fund at the 2001 midterm AFS governing board meeting. The proposal was approved by the Governing Board. The IFS section has now made the seed donation to establish the fund. The IFS offers this contribution as a challenge to other AFS subunits to begin building for our Society's future in international fisheries. All AFS subunits will be encouraged to participate and support the fund's activities.

To date, requests for AFS subunit support for the Endowment has been favorable. The original $1,000 contribution from the IFS section was essentially doubled from subunit support at the Annual meeting in Phoenix . Also 50% the raffle proceeds from the next AFS meeting will be devoted to building the fund.

More information on the fund and this project can be found section web page. Please note that the International Section is looking for people to serve on a committee to develop a charter, terms of reference and selection criteria (see below).

More information can be found on the section web page.

For the past several years the section has been active in coordinating donations of scientific journals and books to international fisheries research laboratory libraries.

I know that reliance on printed journal articles is decreasing as more and more scientific journals are being distributed electronically. However, please remember that not all fisheries scientists have reliable and inexpensive access to the web, thus in some global regions, there is still heavy use of printed journal articles.

If you have old journals (AFS or otherwise), old books (fish and related science), proceedings, special reports (agency reports or from any good source) that are collecting dust and are interested in donating them to some deserving international library, then please contact me. The International Fisheries Section can find them a good home.

Suggestions for deserving libraries as well as donations to help cover mailing costs are most welcome so please send them along to me. Also, if you are going to be traveling to a distant location and are willing to carry some publications with you please contact us and we can provide to you with some filler for your suitcase. Again, more information on this program can be found on the section web page.

Click here to read a summary of recent donations.

Items presented here were collected from internet news feeds and information portals.

Click on the article you wish to read.

Send us your announcements, upcoming events, interesting international fisheries news stories, and other news related items. We'll get it up on IFS Enotes.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestion please contact me at (206) 526-4147. Or e-mail me at bern.megrey@noaa.gov.

Also see the International Fisheries Section web page at http://161.55.120.140/foci/ifs/index.html