Dear Reader,

Welcome to the peer-reviewed Proceddings of the 32^nd Scientific Meeting of the Association of Marine Laboratories of the Caribbean (AMLC), hosted by the Curacao Sea Aquarium on June 13-17, 2005. This was a very successful and well attended congress presided over by our 2005 President, Mr. Steve Piontek, the Educational and Research Manager of the Sea Aquarium. We are confident you will find these Proceedings useful and informative.

The AMLC is an alliance of 34 marine research, education and resource management institutions encouraging the production and exchange of research and resource management information, advancing the cause of marine and environmental education in the region, and facilitating cooperation and mutual assistance among this membership. We operate as a 501 (c)(3) corporation governed by an Executive Board consisting of one voting Representative from each Institutional Member plus a slate of voting officers elected by the Executive Board. The Association is growing, with our most recent additions being the Bermuda Department of Conservation Services and the Lousiana Universities Marine Consortium (LUMCON), who were welcomed to membership during the 2006 Executive Board Meeting, hosted by our long-time member, the Bermuda Biological Station for Research.

We also have almost 200 "Individual Members" with professional research and management interests in the Region. While the AMLC is at its core an association of institutions, these individual members avail themselves of networking and professional interaction opportunities afforded by AMLC activities while contributing importantly to the growth and diversity of our Association.

The AMLC hosts a Scientific Meeting every other year to which all interested marine research, education and natural resource management professionals are most welcome. Or next Scientific Meeting celebrating the AMLC's 50^th Anniversary will be held in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands June 4-8, 2007, and our 2009 meeting is scheduled to be convened in Grenada. Please visit our Internet web site at www.amlc-carib.org for details, including schedules, calls for papers and author guidelines, information on registration and accomodations, and membeship information. If you have professional interest in, or responsabilities for marine resources of the Caribbean, we hope you will accept this invitation to join us.

Sincerely,

Steve LeGore, Ph.D.

E-mail: slegore@mindspring.com