Margaret Murphy, fish program manager for the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, has been elected as second vice president of the American Fisheries Society. Murphy will be installed as an officer at the Annual Meeting in Grand Rapids and, following the progression of officer roles, she will serve as president of the Society in 2026-2027. We thank Patrick Shirey for also standing for this election and for his service to the Society.

Registration for the 153rd Annual Meeting In Grand Rapids is now open. Register by July 7 to save with early registration rates. While registering, be sure to check the range of Continuing Education Courses offering valuable career skills.

Abstract submission for the 9th World Fisheries Congress is now open! Submit your abstract to participate in one of more than 60 themed sessions available at the 2024 World Fisheries Congress in Seattle, Washington, USA. Abstracts are due by June 30, 2023.

Rigid passive integrated transponder PIT-tag antennas in streams are prone to damage from high flows and debris. In this open-access article in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management, the authors designed a flexible PIT-tag antenna that is suitable for half-duplex tags. These flexible-pass-through antennas are easy to build from readily available materials and were used to study size-selective reservoir passage.

In this new article in Transactions of the American Fisheries Society, the authors compare traditional morphometrics with geometric morphometrics in discriminating among morphologies of four forms of ciscoes of the Coregonus artedi complex collected from Lake Huron. A nearly antiquated method of describing shapes of fish was, in fact, as good, if not better than newer methods that use sophisticated mathematical treatments.

Understanding and predicting recruitment, longstanding goals in fisheries science and ecology, are complicated by variation in the importance of environmental drivers coupled with the dynamic nature of individual ecosystems. Developing an understanding of recruitment from well-monitored stocks offers an opportunity to overcome these complexities. 

The Recovering America’s Wildlife Act was re-introduced in the U.S. Senate on March 31. NOW is the time for AFS Chapters across the country to stand-up for imperiled fish and express support for the bill! AFS thanks all the Chapters that provided their support for RAWA in the last Congress, and we appreciate those that signed on to the recent joint letter of support. We have an easily customized template and will take care of getting it to your Senators.

We know everyone is busy – life can get hectic, we get it! But please do not delay renewing your membership any longer. If you renew now, you can still take advantage of registration savings for AFS members. Be a part of the professional society that represents you. We are asking for your support because we support you. AFS provides the resources and tools needed by today’s fisheries professionals; to do this we need the support of the entire fisheries community. If you haven’t yet renewed your membership, please log in to your account and renew TODAY. For questions, contact membership@fisheries.org.