Mr. Mark Miller will present a slide show and talk on marine invertebrates from both local and distant waters. Highlights will include colorful and exotic animals, some dangerous, some harmless, and all fascinating.

In the 35 years since being first certified as a PADI diver in the Pacific Northwest, Mr. Miller has logged over 10,000 dives in places like Truk Lagoon, Bikini Atoll, Kwajalein, Guam, Palau, Pohnpei, the Hawaiian Islands, and from British Columbia to Mexico, and Maine to Cozumel.

A marine biologist, and former commercial diver, he was also a pioneer in technical wreck diving in the far Pacific. He is the author of several books on scuba diving and maritime history, as well as numerous magazine articles and scientific papers. When not diving, he spends his surface intervals producing documentary and educational videos and teaching Oceanography.

The presentation will highlight research currently being conducted by the Massachusetts Shark Research Program. It will include new information on the biology and ecology of our local shark species, while touching on the conservation and management of these often misunderstood creatures.

Dr. Gregory Skomal is an accomplished marine biologist, underwater explorer, photographer, and author. As the principal investigator of the Massachusetts Shark Research Program, he has been studying and diving with sharks for over 25 years. He has written numerous scientific research papers and has appeared in a number of film and television documentaries, including programs for National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and PBS.

Dive Kulture is designed for at-risk and proven-risk, inner-city teens and young adults, Dive Kulture offers scuba diving certification together with environmental education and placement in jobs in the environmental industry. The program offers therapeutic outreach and long-term aftercare services to youth and their families by trained clinicians. Scuba diving is an activity very few inner-city youth are able to try.

More info on the organization Laura works for can be found at:
http://www.dive-kulture.com/about_us.html

Doug Scott will present "Finding the Stella-Marion Shipwreck". Doug and his students of A+ Certification at Natick High School embarked on an exciting adventure to help Dr. David Switzer of Plymouth State University document a steamboat wreck site on Newfound Lake, NH.

The 49.5' Stella-Marion was built in 1900 by Ambrose Adams and used to haul logs, ferry passengers and to deliver mail around the lake. It burned and sank in 1917. Dr. Switzer documented the site in 1984, but the site had been lost after several attempts to relocate it. The first ROV built by A+ was "Nosinki" which helped relocate the wreck. To document the site with color video footage the students built "SeaMoose" an underwater ROV (remotely operated vehicle) that is controlled from the surface using a joystick and laptop.

The trip was a success; students got great footage of the entire wreck. Mr. Blackburn dove with SeaMoose during the trip and got great footage of SeaMoose in action. All footage has been donated to the Hebron Historical Society and Newfound Lake Region Assocation for addition to the lake history archives. Local NH volunteers provided eight pontoon boats for the students to work from.

The project was funded by The Natick Education Foundation, Mass Tech Leadership Council and several private donations, diving gear was supplied by Mass Diving of Natick. The trip was featured in The MetroWest Daily News, Natick Tab, and FOX 25 TV News.

Once Italy joined the Entente Powers in April 1915, a notable part of World War One at sea got confined in the Adriatic sea. Allied forces wanted to close the Otranto Straits and bound the Austro-Hungarian influence in the Mediterranian.

In this presentation we will focus on the most important wrecks of the Adriatic from WWI:

• SMS Zenta
• RN Regina Margherita
• SMS Szent Istvan
• S/S Brindisi
• RN Giuseppe Garibaldi
• S/S Re Umberto
• S/S Linz

Ilir will also list some of the undiscovered and highly important losses. The presentation will be based on the findings of the expeditions that Ilir has led and ones organized by IANTD Expeditions.

The Steamship Portland, lost with all hands in a devastating storm at the turn of the last century, was thought to be beyond the reach of scuba divers. In August of 2008, a group of Massachusetts divers pushed the boundaries of technical diving and visited this untouched wreck. Bob Foster will take you along on the first dives to the Portland, lost for almost 100 years after sailing into the "perfect storm" of November 26th, 1898. This elegant paddle-wheeler carried over 190 passengers and crew as it left India Wharf in Boston bound for Portland Maine, and was last seen as night fell off the coast of Cape Ann. The wreck was discovered in 1989 and positively identified in 2002, lying over 450 feet deep in what is now the Stellwagen Bank Underwater National Marine Sanctuary.

Join Bob and fellow divers Slav Mlch, Dave Faye, Paul Blanchette and Don Morse as they become the first to visit the Portland in 110 years.

Bob has been an active diver since 1972, and became interested in wreck diving while living near the Great Lakes in the 80's. He has been searching for shipwrecks in Massachusetts Bay for the last 8 years, and has discovered and documented over 15 including the YF-415, Brenton Reef Lightship, and Augustus Snow. In 2007, Bob was among the first divers to visit the Palmer/Crary wrecks, 360 feet below the surface in Stellwagen Sanctuary. Bob's wreck diving interests have also taken him to Lake Superior and to the Florida Keys, as well as to New York/New Jersey to dive the U-869 and the USS Spikefish.

For those of you that have not had the opportunity to work with people that are physically challenged to help them enjoy sports through scuba diving it is an extremely rewarding experience. To assist them in overcoming and working around the challenges that restrict them and then enjoying the dive with them just can't be put into words. Every single volunteer feels it is an honor to help divers with disabilities and wounded warriors who laid their lives on the line for their country.

Debra Greenhalgh is National Underwater Association of Instructors (NAUI) Course Director, International Handicap Scuba Association and National Instructors Association of Divers with Disabilities (NIADD) Instructor, NAUI NITROX Instructor, and ASHI CPR / FIRST Aid / AED Instructor. She is an engineer at Naval Undersea Warfare Center, RI, an adjunct professor at Carnegie Mellon University, PA, and a former recipient of the Hugh Fletcher Memorial Scholarship with the Women Divers Hall of Fame. Through Scuba Made Easy LLc, she teaches recreational SCUBA to enabled and disabled people, local police, firefighters, and rescue dive teams. She is the cofounder of Divers for Hope nonprofit organization (www.diversforhope.org). Debra is also a 2009 candidate for the NAUI Board of Directors and Women Divers Hall of Fame Board of Trustees.

Mike Walsh will present photographs from a trip taken in October 2008 to visit Lembeh Strait, North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Certain parts of Indonesia are considered the center of marine bio-diversity. The Lembeh Strait affords the opportunity to find some of the most unique, rarest and poisonous marine creatures. The bottom of the strait is mostly black volcanic sand leaving few places for the creatures to hide. Although, it still takes a sharp eye to find them!

Mike Walsh is an avid scuba diver with a log book approaching 1000 dives ranging from the lobster infested New England coast line to the crystal clear cenotes of the Yucatan to the warm/exotic waters of the south pacific.

Sean Holland, Fellow of the Explorers Club, will discuss the history and tragic sinking of one of the Caribbean's leading deep water shipwrecks, the Bianca C. Sean will share images gathered over his 10 years of diving this 18,000-ton ocean liner, which rests off the coast of Grenada in 90 to 165 fsw.

Sean will also show images of the Shakem, a picturesque shallow-water shipwreck near the Bianca C, and will provide us with an insider's guide to diving and exploring the Spice Island.

Sean has contributed stories and underwater photographs to publications including: Nitrox Diver, Immersed and National Geographic’s Adventure. Sean started diving at 16 off Fairfield County, CT and Long Beach Island, NJ.

In October 2007, Jim and fellow MWDC member Mike Walsh joined a group of underwater photographers led by professional photographer Jonathan Bird for a trip to Lembeh Strait, Indonesia. This area is famous for such creatures as the deadly blue ring octopus and the dazzling flamboyant cuttlefish.

Lembeh is a "muck" diver's paradise featuring such creatures as frogfish, scorpion fish, pipe fish, mandarin fish and other bottom dwellers. There are also several coral reefs available which are home to a great variety of tropical fish and corals. After Lembeh, Jim and Mike dove nearby Bunaken National Park.

Jim began diving in Thailand in 1995 and has logged over 400 dives. Diving trips to the Pacific include Truk Lagoon (2005), Bikini Atoll (2006) and most recently Lembeh Strait in October of 2007. Locally, Jim dives for lobsters most summer and fall weekends and photographs such dive sites as the Isle of Sholes and the U 853.

Jodi Burnham and Jerry Cronin will present photography and video on some of their favorite Cape Cod dive sites. These will include the Perth Amboy Barges, Horatio Hall, Aransas, the Port Hunter and quite possibly a couple of others!

Jodi Burnham has been scuba diving since 2005. It is something she has a tremendous passion for and wished she had started many years earlier. She has a diversity of dives in her logbook. Her dives include locations North, South, and East of Cape Cod. She has also dove in Florida, Roatan, Tortola, and Bonaire.

Some of Jodi's favorite dives are in the local waters of Cape Cod. Her interests include photography, the local sea life and shipwrecks. She also enjoys exploring and learning the history of the wrecks in the local waters.

Jodi is a Divemaster and recently became an SSI Instructor. She continues to work on expanding her diving skills into technical diving. Jodi has met many new friends in the diving community and finds scuba divers to be a remarkable group of people and hopes to meet many more in the years to come. And in between all of this, she works as the full time billing manager for The Cardiovascular Specialists on Cape Cod.

Jerry Cronin's dive career spans four decades. During that time he has worked as a divemaster and equipment repair technician for East Coast Divers and The Dive Locker. Jerry has recently retired from his real job as a F-15 crew chief for the 102 Fighter Wing at Otis Air National Guard. Now that Jerry has retired, he is the main divemaster for the Cape Diver Charter boat and an SSI Instructor.

Jerry has specialized in wreck diving and shipwreck research. He and many of his friends have located and dove over 70 sites, concentrating on wrecks in New England waters. He's made over 1000 wreck dives, 700 deep dives, and over 300 decompression dives.

Some of Jerry's dives include wrecks like the U-853, USS Bass, Roy Jodrey - a 700ft ore carrier in 250 feet of water. One of the well known dives Jerry has accomplished is the Andrea Doria. To date he's made dives in excess of 300ft.

One of Jerry's greatest pleasures in life is to introduce new divers to the incredible world of New England wreck diving. He's been running his own boat for over a decade to these wonderful time capsules and challenges friends and newcomers alike to "Come with him if you dare"

Joe Romeiro will present a preview screening of “SHARKS: Silent Requiem”, a film about the beauty and majesty of sharks. Filmed at various locations around the globe, it showcases many of the world’s marquee shark species. Trying to replace fear with facts, Silent Requiem utilizes stunning imagery and sound to show the side of sharks rarely seen. The focus is on the sharks themselves and not the glory of the divers. Shark populations have been in serious decline for decades and the public needs to understand that these creatures need our help to survive. If the negative campaign continues, some species of shark will become extinct in our lifetime. Hopefully Silent Requiem will help viewers see that sharks are worthy of protection and do not live up to their negative reputations.

Joe has traveled to the Azores, Guadalupe, North Carolina, Bahamas, Socorro Islands, Fiji and locally to film sharks. He enjoys bringing people the beautiful images of the oceans top predator. With the help of top researchers, he has gathered little known facts about sharks with the hope his viewers walk away with something new and an appreciation of preserving sharks for future generations.

Peter Venoutsos will present "Shipwrecks, Sharks and Seals" - a thirty minute video split up evenly between the three topics. Shipwrecks will focus on the Chelsea, Neptune, U-853 and USS Bass. Blue Sharks were filmed while diving with Captain Charlie Donilon of the Snappa docked in Point Judith, RI. The Harbor Seals were filmed off the Isle of Shoals.

Peter has been a certified scuba diver since 1976 and a certified commercial diver since 1983. He has worked for private underwater engineering firms, the Federal government and the U.S. Navy. He has had articles and photos published by magazines like Immersed, Skin Diver and Northeast Diver. Peter's interests include underwater photography, video, shipwreck and cave diving.

MWDC presents a first time, unique experience for divers by presenting a round table discussion called "Special Interest Groups". Attendees will break up into four groups; UW Photography, Boat Diving, Shore Diving and UW Hunting. We'll spend twenty minutes or so with each group in an informal discussion listening to the people who are leading the group. Gear, pictures, books, etc. could be used, such as a book showing the various Cape Ann dive sites for shore dives, or using a laptop to show pictures with the entry and exit points of specific shore dives dives. Each group leader will bring their own materials and people are encouraged to ask questions and engage in meaningful conversation.

We'd really like to run this as an information sharing session where the more experienced people are helping those who have an interest in that particular topic. The people leading the group may want to even prepare a single page of important ideas to share as a handout. Here are the scheduled group leaders:

• UW Photography – Jim McKnight and Mike Walsh
• Boat Diving – Heather Knowles and Dave Caldwell
• Shore Diving - Alexine Raineri and Roy Mennell
• UW Hunting – John Desmond and Jeff Wagner

Ethan Gordon will share his brand new images and stories of diving the wrecks of the famed Truk Lagoon as well as images from an earlier trip to Lake Champlain.

Ethan became certified as a scuba diver in 1984 and has nearly 2800 dives under his belt. Since 1989 he has taught scuba diving to hundreds of people and has received awards for his skill as a teacher. He holds numerous certifications in addition to his instructor ratings (PADI Master Scuba Diver Trainer- 5 specialties, SSI Dive Control Specialist Instructor- 10 specialties). He has been working as a freelance photojournalist primarily in the diving, fishing and travel industries since 1995. His assignment work has taken him from the cold waters off New England to the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, the Coral Sea, and numerous islands in the Caribbean. Ethan has photographed thousands of marine creatures from around the world. However, his skill doesn't stop at the water's edge. His topside photography makes his assignment work stand out. Ethan has been honored twice by Skin Diver Magazine and Asian Diver. Both magazines included his images in their prestigious Photo Annual Collector's Editions, and once by Sport Diver, which included one of his images in their first Photo Annual Collector's Edition. Ethan also served as editor of Fathoms, the magazine of the underwater world, from May 2005 - February 2008.

Fred Calhoun will present a film called “The Rockport Breakwater”. The film is about the building, abandonment and subsequent scuba diving on the granite structure two miles from shore off the coast of Rockport, MA. The Rockport Breakwater was produced by Chris and Fred Calhoun.

Prior to the presentation there will be a short description and discussion of the situation in Gloucester having to do with the Diver's Flag Law and how people can be represented by it.

Fred has been an observer and participant in this arena someone has mis-dubbed “the scuba industry” for the last 55 years. Fred began diving while in high school in 1953. With two friends he assembled scuba units from CO2 fire extinguisher “bottles”, built “fins” from plywood paddles bolted and taped to low-rise war surplus “sneakers”, made “masks” from inner-tube bodies and cut glass ports. His first “professionally assembled” product was a do-it-yourself wet suit kit complete with a sheet of foam neoprene (10’ long by 4’ wide), a pattern (small-medium-large), and a bottle of glue – all in a box. Whenever we needed something, we built it.

Fred opened a dive shop on Boston’s South Shore and began teaching servicemen to scuba dive in the Army/Navy pool on Boston Harbor in 1957. He later sold the store and expanded his scuba school.

Fred wrote The Basic Course for the Underwater Society of America. He became “certified” as a NEC instructor, a YMCA instructor, a NAUI instructor (#380) and PDIC instructor. Fred became NAUI’s North Atlantic Manager in 1967 and has been training NAUI instructors since then to the present.

For the last 30 years Fred has been chartering his dive boat EASY DIVER out-of-Gloucester. During this time Fred has written 15 books on scuba diving (available from AQUA-QUEST or NAUI). During that same period Fred has produced and directed 10 underwater films.

Bob Foster will discuss the planning and execution of the first dives to the Frank A Palmer and Louise B. Crary, two enormous coal schooners that collided and sank together in December, 1902 in what is now the Stellwagen Bank Underwater National Marine Sanctuary. The Palmer is believed to be the largest 4-masted schooner ever built at 274 ft. in length and a beam of 43 ft. In July of 2007 Bob and three other local divers became the first to visit these wrecks, which sit in 365FSW right here in our own backyard.

Bob has been an active diver since 1972, and became interested in wreck diving while living near the Great Lakes in the 80’s. He has been searching for shipwrecks in Massachusetts Bay for the last 8 years, and has discovered and documented over 15 including the YF-415, Brenton Reef Lightship, and Augustus Snow. Bob’s wreck diving interests have also taken him to Lake Superior and to the Florida Keys, as well as to New York/New Jersey to dive the U-869 and the USS Spikefish.

While being one of the first divers on a new wreck is certainly a thrill, some of his most memorable dives are in the kelp forests off Monterey and the warm blue waters of Bimini and Puerto Rico.

Bjorn has been a MWDC club member since 2000, board member since 2003, and enjoys all types of scuba diving. From cold water ice diving in northern Michigan, to the wrecks of the Great Lakes, to the warm tropical Caribbean and Pacific waters. With a busy work schedule and two young children, there is not as much time left for diving as one might want. But he and his wife (and favorite dive buddy) Gayle make at least one dive trip each year. With kids in tow, they find family friendly destinations where everyone can have fun. In Hawaii this February, they found a local pre-school where the kids could play all day while mom and dad got one week of good diving. The most memorable dive destinations are probably a tie between Sipadan and Kapalai Islands of Borneo, Malaysia and Cocos Island on the pacific of Costa Rica.

The presentation will be from this summer's trip to western Norway with fellow club member Roman Ptashka, to dive a few of the many WWII casualties along the rugged Norwegian coast line. With only a simple acrylic housing for our "point and shot" cameras, neither Roman nor Bjorn claim to be underwater photographers. The presentation will show a few under water photos and some shots of the beautiful Norwegian interior and coastal. A 25 minute promo film will also detail the wrecks dived and the marine life encountered.