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Back in 2006 an idea was born by Craig Kuhn, aka Gatortailale, and Andy Dehart of the National Aquarium to bring hobbyists and public aquariums together for a project. Together, WAMAS and the National Aquarium, Washington, DC, built the Guam Live Reef Exhibit - one of the first efforts of its kind and certainly one of the more successful endeavors in terms of working together and blending different groups and mentalities together. Although it has had its bumps and bruises along the way and never turned into what all involved hoped it would, it has a special place in my heart. The night that we voted as a club to build this system was also the night that I was voted in as Secretary, January 20, 2007 (I distinctly remember being nervous about the election until the point in time when we gave speeches and John Hess, who was also running for Secretary, gave a rousing speech consisting of "Vote for Dave, I'm going to"). Since that time, my involvement with WAMAS has become greater and greater and I've been an officer since then, 7 years this coming Winter Meeting. During that time I've had my hand in a lot of projects and efforts of the club, but the NADC exhibit has always been one that I've wanted to change for the better. Last fall, I became the Director of Operations at NADC and shortly thereafter when my Executive Director left and our Director of Fishes and Invertebrates also left, one by the name of Andy Dehart, the responsibility of running NADC fell to me and our Curator, Jay Bradley. As my pet project was to make sure that the WAMAS tank was one to be proud of, I pushed WAMAS and NADC to work together again and upgrade some of the equipment on the system and bring back some of the corals that had suffered when we lost our coral aquarist a couple of years back. Although the exhibit never had the chance to become what it could have with a new hire last fall, I never stopped telling our visitors of the importance of that tank and the impact that hobbyists could have on conservation and the Guam Live Reef Exhibit was a point of pride for me despite some shortcomings in terms of the appearance. Today, though, was a very sad day for me personally and professionally. NADC closed its doors to the public on September 30 of this year and today was the day that the Guam Live Reef Exhibit was taken down. The corals, rock, and equipment will make their way up to the National Aquarium, Baltimore, our sister institution, and hopefully we'll start a new chapter between WAMAS and our only public aquarium in the area. I've laid some groundwork with some of the people that I've had the distinct pleasure of working with and I hope that we can continue to work with the staff at the National Aquarium in the future. On a side note, I have no pictures of the tank now that it's down - I could not bring myself to walk down to take a look at it once the breakdown began.
