Minutes from the 2008 General Assembly

• Approval of Minutes from the 5th General Assembly held in Copenhagen on 7 Sept 2006: These minutes had been posted on the ISSHA website, and were accepted and approved without change.
• Finance Committee Report: This was presented by Nina Lundholm . ISSHA income derives from subscriptions (62%), auction (27%; US$6K in Denmark) and the sale of books (11%). Major expenses are Travel awards (US$14K for HAB13), the Yasumoto, Young Scientists awards and website development. Our balance (US$23K) is good.
• Travel Awards Committee Report: This was presented by Don Anderson. Travel awards were advertised in June 2008. A total of 26 awards were made worth US$27.5K (11K from ISSHA, 14K from Hong Kong organizers, 2.5K from UNEP).This allowed 18 PhD students to attend HAB13, with the remaining awards going to postdocs and masters students. A vote of thanks was raised to Judy Kleindinst in Don Anderson’s lab for administrating these awards.
• Publications Committee Report (Jane Lewis): Nothing to report.
• Committee on Conference Proceedings Report: Øjvind Moestrup announced the publication of the HAB12 Copenhagen Conference Proceedings, in which he had been assisted by 12 associate editors. 700 copies were printed in Vietnam. 111 papers were accepted out of 140 submitted; 200 attendees paid for the volume and those present at HAB13 were encouraged to pick up the volume to save postage. The time-consuming task of editing conference proceedings (2000hrs) was discussed, and suggestions to speed up the process suggested (follow the prescribed format, use 300 dpi for illustrations etc.) and request papers to be submitted within 1 month of the conference. For HAB 13, manuscripts need to be submitted to the HAB13 secretariat.
• Achievement Awards Committee Report: This was presented by Beatriz Reguera from notes provided by Marina Montresor. Both nominators and nominees need to be ISSHA members in good financial standing, that is they should have paid the ISSHA fee at the last conference. If you did not attend HAB13 (where we paid for 2008-2009), you can still renew your membership by paying at any time between Jan 2008 to Dec 2009. In Jan 2010 you are paying for the period 2010-2011. A call for nominations was published on the ISSHA website and sent to ISSHA members by e-mail in Jan 2008. A reminder was sent in May 2008. After applying the criteria, the committee ended up with 12 nominations. Candidates eligible for the Yasumoto award were Edna Graneli, Gustaaf Hallegraeff, Karen Steidinger. Candidate eligible for the Young Scientist Achievement award was Rosa Figueroa.

[postscript: Best student talk awards for Shi Hong (China) and Iris Baula (Philippines), best student poster awards for Laura Escalera (Spain) and Veronica Lundgren (Sweden), Yasumoto awardee Karen Steidinger (USA) and Young Scientist Achievement awardee Rosa Figueroa (Spain) were subsequently announced by the ISSHA president Pat Tester at the HAB13 conference dinner on 7 Nov 2008]

• Ad Hoc Committee Report . Henrik Enevoldsen explained details of the HAB-MAP project, first raised in Florida in 2002 but not progressed very far in the absence of a suitable platform to store and interface the data. A successful design workshop held 8-9 Jan 2008 in Ostende has given new life to HAB-MAP linking it to the Encyclopedia of Life (EoL) initiative under the name HAIS (Harmful Algae Information System). The proposal is to map the biogeography of all species causative of ASP, AZP, CFP, DSP, NSP, PSP, YTX, spirolides, fish kills (with references; data to reside with ISSHA). The IOC Taxonomy Reference List will similarly merge into the world register of marine organisms (WoRMS/OBIS). The Committee hopes to get back to the more than 25 regional editors that volunteered in 2002 in the near future with an invitation to start compiling data and uploading it on-line to the HAB-MAP database.
• Elections Committee Report: ISSHA has approximately 300 members. Karen Steidinger presented the outcome of the ISSHA council elections: President: Beatriz Reguera (Spain); Vice-Presidents: Gustaaf Hallegraeff (Australia) & Jennifer Martin (Canada); Secretary: Karin Rengefors (Sweden); Treasurer: Nina Lundholm, (Denmark); Council Members: Lorraine Backer (USA), Eileen Bresnan (Scotland), Marta Estrada (Spain), Martha Ferrario (Argentina),Esther Garcés (Spain), K. C. Ho (China), Rita Horner (USA), Ichiro Imai (Japan), Ian Jenkinson (France), Anke Kremp (Finland), Lincoln McKenzie (New Zealand), Clarisse Odebrecht (Brazil), Jong-Gyr Park (Korea), Carmelo Tomas (USA)

• Venue for 2012 meeting. ISSHA President Tester called for a detailed check list for future conference venues, in which budget, program & accommodation details need to be provided to and vetted by Council 6 months ahead of the next assembly. This rigorous process is to guarantee the continuing high standards of ICHA conference organization.. She apologized to a late bid received by Mexico that these new rules had not been clearly communicated to all Council members and encouraged Mexico to bring forward their bid to be presented at HAB14 in Greece. Subsequently a well-developed bid by Korea was presented by Dr Hak-Gyoon Kim and colleagues to host HAB15 in October 2012 at the Changwon Exhibition Convention, Changwon City (near Busan), in Korea. This bid was accepted by all ISSHA members in good standing. A presentation on details of the HAB 14 venue in November 2010 in Crete, Greece, was presented by Kalliopi Pagou during the HAB13 closing ceremony.

The meeting adjourned at 7.00 pm, to give way to the ISSHA auction presided over by Barrie Dale.

Past and newly elected ISSHA Council members at the Banquet Hall during the 13th ICHA Conference in Hong Kong (November 2008)