President’s Message – September 2014

Dear Aquarist,

Welcome back! After a long and beautiful summer, it is great to be talking fish again. All of us at BAS hope that everyone had a very enjoyable summer. We started our year with a marine guest speaker – Greg Sullivan. Greg’s topic for the evening was “Saltwater For The Squeamish.”  Greg gave his presentation the old fashioned way – he spoke about his topic and took questions and answers from the audience to elaborate or give more detailed information to our members. It was a great talk as evidenced by the multitude of questions from our audience.

We have a couple of new projects going on at BAS. One is the 2014 Photo Contest. There are 19 categories and fantastic prizes from our sponsors. Each prize has a minimum of a $100.00 value. So come on and enter your photos because the contest ends on Sunday, Oct. 13. The winners will be announced at our Nov.14 event. Please read our Bulletin or go to our web site for all information regarding this contest.

The Photo Contest ends in Oct. and our new Forum Questions & Answers section starts in Oct. and runs through Dec. This contest will have 3 different time frames. Oct. through Dec., Jan. through March, and April through June. Let’s see who can ask and who can answer the most questions. Prizes are at the selection of the winners. We will have a winner for the most amount of questions and another winner for the most amount of answers. Please see our Bulletin or our web site for more information.

We had mentioned the possibility of bus trips to the Catfish Convention in Virginia for this October and another bus trip to Ohio for the 20th Anniversary Cichlid & Catfish Convention in Cleveland. However, due to high costs for registration, hotel rates and bus costs, we have had to cancel the bus trips. We will try to have more trips available in the near future.

Our upcoming event is our giant October auction! On Friday, October 10th, we will once again have an auction only meeting with no speaker. Anticipate a couple of hundred items of equipment and livestock in both freshwater and marine fish, plants and invertebrates. It will be an event you don’t want to miss.

As always, the meetings will be at the NY Aquarium Education Hall. Doors open at 7:30 PM. And, as always, there is Free Parking and Free Refreshments.  There is a construction project going on in the usual lot on the right, so we had to park in the Aquarium lot to the left, go up the ramp to the Boardwalk and enter Education Hall directly from the Boardwalk for the September meeting.  We anticipate this might be necessary for the next few months, so watch for signs at the entrance to the Aquarium.

Please visit our new website where you can read the Bulletin and enjoy a full color Aquatica. The interactive forums and sponsor sections are truly remarkable. Provided you have given us your email address, you will be getting notifications of club events via email.

I am asking for your help and support. If you want to see different speakers or try different things, please let me know. The elected officials of the Brooklyn Aquarium Society are here to serve YOU! Please let us know what you want and why. It would be helpful to everyone.

It is important that you visit and patronize our sponsors. It goes full circle: by helping them, they are also helping you as hobbyists and everyone is helping the Brooklyn Aquarium Society, so help us, help you!

For more info, please call our BAS Hotline at (718) 837-4455, or visit our modern website at WWW.BROOKLYNAQUARIUMSOCIETY.ORG.

On a more personal note – Any member who desires to attend a Board meeting, which are held at the Education Center of the New York Aquarium on the 1st Friday of the month, September through June, please notify me at (718) 238-1792 by the Tuesday previous to the meeting.

Joe Graffagnino
President