Greetings and I hope everyone had a good 2009 and a very enjoyable holiday period. The Society had a very good year with very successful OCEANS Conferences in Bremen, Germany and Biloxi, Mississippi. Our RECON Committee headed up by Bob Wernli has done a marvelous job in picking sites and doing preliminary organization of our OCEANS Conferences and our JOAB Committee headed up by René Garrello has done an excellent job in helping conduct the Conferences. The Student Poster Program continues to be one of the highlights of our Conferences. We also conducted our Underwater Technology Symposium in Wuxi, China, and held our first Conference in India as technical co-sponsor of SYMPOL with Sandy Williams and Jim Collins serving on the technical committee. We now have a new OES Chapter in Norway where the OCEANS Conference will be held in 2013 in Bergen. Liz Creed has done an excellent job in recruiting new members at our Conferences. We were able to cover our expenses in 2009 and are happy that the Society continues to be in good financial condition.
     I would like to thank James Collins for his service as Vice-President of Professional Activities and Joseph Vadus for his service as Vice-President for Conference Development. Our new Vice-President for Professional Activities starting in 2010 will be Elizabeth Creed and Robert Wernli will be Vice-President for Conference Development. For 2010 we also have new ADCOM members William Carey, James Candy and Robert Wernli.
     We completed our Society Review with the IEEE in November and I appreciate all the hard work that our EXCOM and ADCOM did in preparing for the review. The Review Team seemed to be impressed with the Society and its accomplishments but we have not seen the final report so we will hold off on further comments and hope for good results. I am particularly pleased with our international efforts and with our plans to conduct a Conference in Vienna in 2011 with several other IEEE Societies in our Division.
     The OCEANS Conference in Biloxi, which will be covered in greater detail by our Newsletter Editor, James Gant, had many new features including the Teacher Training Program prior to the Conference and the Student Activities with local high school classes which we hope to carry over to future OCEANS Conferences. We closed the Conference on the last night with the Gulf Guardian Awards which OES and MTS hosted at the Beau Rivage. The Gulf Guardian Awards are presented by the Gulf of Mexico Program to organizations who make a significant contribution to maintain and improve the environment of the Gulf of Mexico. This year there were seven first-place winners including the categories of Business; Education; Government; Civic/Non-Profit; Individual; Bi-Nation and Partnership. There were also six second-place winners and six third-place winners. Some of the winners included Conoco Phillips, Science Museum of Minnesota, Delta Farmers, Sarasota Bay, Matagorda Island Marsh Restoration Program, just to name a few of the winners to show you the diversity of the program. All of these folks actually work at maintaining and restoring our environment and range from youngsters to retirees who devote their weekends and other free time to the program. For me it was really thrilling to see how our citizens are concerned about the environment of the Gulf of Mexico and working hard to clean it up.
     These were only the Award winners that were featured in the Program and I am sure there are many other organizations that are doing the same.

We have a full calendar of events this year:

     I suspect we may have some other workshops or meeting in the last few months of the year as well.

Jerry Carroll,
OES President