A Recap of This Year's Annual Meeting in Idaho Falls, Idaho

The meeting took place in February at the Shilo Inn with 233 attendees, of whom 33 were students—tremendous volunteers—from the Palouse and Portneuf student units. The topics of the meeting included passive integrated transponder tag detection systems, geospatial information using Google Earth, and hatchery innovations. President Elect Tom Curet organized the plenary session, under the theme: “Stream Connectivity in Fisheries Management: Fix It, Break It, or Leave It?” Plenary speakers included Jeff DiLuccia, Chris Beasley, Dave Moser, Dan Isaak, and Helen Neville, all of whom highlighted the fisheries management issues facing many western states, and the struggle to protect native species from nonnative invasions. Forty-two technical presentations were made with two concurrent sessions, a poster session with 12 posters, a welcome social, a mentoring social, and student mixer pizza feed, and a sixth annual “Spawning Run.” Despite threats of ice, snow, and rain, the sun came out long enough to provide excellent conditions for the Spawning Run and they had the best participation since this event started. A shorter walking route and some rather risqué outfits may have also contributed to the success.