December, 1999 
SCAMIT Newsletter 
Vol. 18, No. 8 
(trombone), the volume was more subdued. Dr. 
Don Reish used this occasion to donate to 
SCAMIT members papers culled from his 
reprint collection. Don Cadien, Tony Phillips, 
John Ljubenkov and Larry Lovell were the 
most active literature hounds. Larry was acting 
on behalf of the SIO Invertebrate Collection 
library which he says can use some fleshing 
out in taxonomic source literature. Dr. Reish 
only got through the “M”s, but will finish the 
job at a later date. Thanks to him on behalf of 
those present, and from SCAMIT in general for 
sharing his riches with us. We finally folded 
our tents and headed home about 10PM, still 
full and flushed with enjoyment at a nice 
opportunity to get together with good friends 
and celebrate the season. Hope more of you 
can join the celebration in 2000. 
13 DECEMBER MEETING 
The polychaete meeting scheduled for the 13 th 
of December was canceled at the last minute. 
Calls to likely participants discovered that 
regular attendees would not be able to make 
this meeting. Vice-President Leslie Harris then 
called the remaining persons who might be 
coming and informed them of the cancellation. 
This worked well, but not perfectly. Hyperion 
was in the process of changing their voice mail 
system, so Tony Phillips did not get his 
message, and came to the non-meeting. Two 
folks from the Orange County Sanitation 
District, Mike McCarthy and Christina Thomas 
were also not informed and came to the 
meeting. A small polychaete oriented 
discussion was held, but only in the morning. 
We were to have had a guest speaker, Dr. 
Sepalika Jayamanne - an ecologist from Sri 
Lanka who was visiting the museum. Her sigh 
of relief at not having to present a program was 
palpable. I later met her at Leslie’s house 
where she had been staying since her arrival. A 
very nice lady whose doctoral work and 
present employ are both related to decapod 
aquaculture. She is Senior Research Officer 
and Officer in Charge of the Regional Center 
of NARA (the National Aquatic Resources 
Research & Development Agency) in Sri 
Lanka. 
PRO BONO 
Dr. Amy Wagner of EPA Region 9 has alerted 
us to the availability of benthic samples from 
the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. 
These are subsamples of grabs taken by the 
U.S. Geological Survey in the sanctuary’s 
northern portion from 1995-1997. She 
provided a description of the amount of 
material involved (large numbers of samples 
with only a few organisms in each). The EPA 
lab is attempting to find some way to get the 
samples worked up, but currently has no 
funding for the effort (still diligently looking 
for money though). Some interest in looking at 
them was expressed by the group at Moss 
Landing Marine Lab, which has considerable 
experience in the area. Dr. Wagner is also 
aware of SCAMIT and thought that some of us 
SCAMites might be interested in participating 
in some way (perhaps as QC or overflow 
taxonomists). Since they don’t currently have 
funding, any such effort should be considered 
pro bono until proven otherwise. Interested 
parties can get more information or volunteer 
their help by contacting Dr. Amy Wagner, 
USEPA Region 9 Laboratory, 1337 S. 46 th St., 
Bldg. 201, Richmond, CA, 94804 (Tel: 510- 
412-2329, FAX: 510-412-2304). Our thanks to 
Ann Dalkey (CLAEMD) who initiated contact 
on this issue. 
8 
