Welcome to the 42nd Annual Conference of the International Association for Aquatic Animal Medicine. Rob Laughlin, representing our host, The Mirage, attended his very first IAAAM conference in 2010 and immediately following that meeting (actually during that meeting) he and I started to plan the 2011 conference. Rob has been amazing to work with over the past year and you will easily see his commitment to the conference and to our organization. I was fortunate enough to visit The Mirage (my first time in Las Vegas) in September and meet with Rob and the Dolphin Habitat Team lead by Dave Blasko (Director of Animal Care) as well as Franz Kallao (Vice President Hotel Operations), Angie Bacud (Convention Services Manager) and Anthony Shinn (Catering Manager) and Garland Cunningham (Director of Technical Services). It was a huge help for Rob and I to be able to sit down together with everyone to do the detailed planning. Together we secured 30 sponsorships totally more than $39,000 to offset conference costs! Please visit and thank our sponsors for their support which allowed us to keep the increase in registration cost minimal. As costs continue to rise, sponsors will become more and more important for planning conferences that we can all afford to attend in years to come.

Getting the conference together is a huge endeavor but I can honestly say that I had a lot of fun doing it as well. The efforts of many people need to be acknowledged. The IAAAM board worked tirelessly to assure that things went smoothly. First and foremost I need to thank Judy St. Leger for passing on all of her knowledge gained from planning the 2010 conference. I was fortunate enough to visit Judy at her new farm in New York and in between herding chickens out in the morning and in the evening we spent hours going over all of the ins and outs of planning a successful conference. Throughout the year she continued to be available to answer questions and I cannot imagine accomplishing this without her help. I will strive to do the same to help the next President- elect as I found this mentorship invaluable. John Jones was very patient with me as I learned the ins and outs of the website. He created all of the forms for registration, submitting abstracts and uploading presentations. He also sent out the reminder emails and added all of the sponsor links. Pam Tuomi always answered my phone calls and dealt with all of the credit card payments from our sponsors. Cindy Driscoll handled question related to membership status and processed memberships. Lisa Murphy helped with student issues and Chris Dold prepared the CE form for the conference. The awards committee (Don Stremme, Tom Reiderson, Craig Harms, and Judy St. Leger) made recommendations for open board positions and for an award to recognize a member who has shown dedication to their field. A huge thanks to Laura Wyeth, a Mystic Aquarium volunteer, who spent countless hours with me formatting abstracts and getting all of the program and proceedings information ready to send to our publishers and to Allison Tuttle who assisted with the "puzzle" of organizing the talks into sessions. As you can see planning the IAAAM conference is a group effort and I thank all of the volunteers and board members for their help!

This year we have 115 abstracts in the proceedings, comprised of 28 posters and 87 oral presentations, including 25 by students of various types (undergraduate, graduate, veterinary and post-doctoral students, interns and residents). The breakdown of species includes are 10 general marine mammal or aquatic animal abstracts, 39 cetacean, 31 pinniped, 13 fish, 7 turtle, 6 manatee, 5 bird, 3 invertebrate and 1 otter abstract. This year for the first time a committee of three members (Francis Gulland, Larry Dunn and Craig Harms) reviewed abstracts and made recommendations on the type of presentation (poster or oral).

A team of 17 session chairs was assembled to help before and during the conference. Thank you to all who are serving as session chairs: Rob Laughlin (Plenary), Francis Gulland (Stranding), Allison Tuttle and Ilze Berzins (Conservation and Wildlife 1 and 2) Lance Adams, Stephane Lair and Niels Van Elk (Case Reports 1, 2 and 3), Claire Erlacher-Reid and Cara Field (Posters), Katie Colegrove (Infectious Disease and The Student Workshop), Carrie Goertz and Larry Dunn (Research 1 and 2), Daniel Garcia-Parraga (Techniques), Tonya Clauss (Medicine), Greg Lewbart (Fish and Invertebrates), Judy St. Leger (Pathology and Ophthalmology), Craig Harms (Clinical Pathology), and Liz Koutsos (Nutrition). The session chairs disseminate information on the session day and time, presentation instructions and uploading of talks prior to the conference. At the conference they assure that the talks for their session are loaded onto the computer and that their presenters and session itself runs on time. I've also recruited James Reid and Nate Dadosky to help with tech support including loading talks and running the computer during the sessions. I'd also like to thank our workshop and evening session planners. Enrique Yarto Jaramillo (Latin American Marine Mammal Workshop- in Spanish), Steven Holmstrom (Intraoral Radiography Workshop), Pam Govett and Jodie Sherrill (ACZM Ultra short Board Preparation Course), Mike Briggs (Clinical Conundrums) and Jack Jewel (Elasmobranchs and Sea Turtles).

It's been an honor to serve as President-elect and plan the 2011 conference in Las Vegas. I've learned so much along the way and gotten to know lots of new people including our student members. They are the future of this organization and the aquatic field. Please take time to talk to them, share your experiences and encourage them. In fact I encourage all of you to get more involved with IAAAM whether now or in years to come.

Lisa Mazzaro
Program Chair and IAAAM President-Elect