We have every reason to celebrate what has been a tremendously successful 50th anniversary year for the Club. We have wined and dined from the roof tops of Central to the surf line of Tai Long Wan; we have cheered with the crowds at the Hong Kong Stadium and sung along with the chorus line at the Cultural Centre; and we have danced from the halls of the Football Club to the bars of Wan Chai. All this was the culmination of many months of hard work by our anniversary sub-committee and was supported from all areas of our membership and our friends from the wider diving community in Hong Kong.

Tragically, the year was brought to a close with the arrival of the devastating news of the tsunami that hit close to our part of the world on Boxing Day and affected locations at which many of our members have visited and dived. Thankfully everyone we know in the Club was able to return in one piece although some members inadvertently found themselves offering help to those affected and using their diver rescue skills in ways that they might never have imagined.

The Club has not stood alone through the year as we have again enjoyed several shared diving trips with the SCDC and have even seen a few faces from Y-Dive on our boats. This has been reciprocated with our members joining the other club's trips on junks and rather smaller boats, in the case of Y-Dive. This sort of behaviour is to be positively encouraged as it can only raise awareness of the Club in Hong Kong and of course bolster the numbers available to support our activities.

It is pleasing to note that the Club's overseas dive trips have been well supported this year and by a far wider number of people than in recent times. I think that this is an area where we may do well at retaining our membership numbers by providing somewhat more visually satisfying diving opportunities than we seem to be able to offer in Hong Kong waters at present.

Throughout the year our Surface Interval has provided an opportunity for our less frequent divers to remain in touch with the Club as well as giving potential members a starting point that may seem a little less daunting than agreeing to meet a bunch of strangers at Central ferry piers on a Sunday morning. I hope that this will continue to be well attended in the coming year and look forward to seeing some old faces and meeting some new faces.

I feel very privileged to have been the Club's Chairman over the course of the year and I would like to thank the Committee for their support and hard work that is often done behind the scenes. My tasks as Chairman would have been far more difficult had I not had the resources of the kind volunteers that have put in so much of their time. I would like to thank the committee members individually for their contributions; Jo Webb, our Secretary, for putting up with my incessant e-mails and telephone calls at all hours to sort out last minute details; David Taylor, our Diving Officer, for ensuring that the diving has proceeded smoothly and without incident over the season and for providing IT support and logo drafting for those of us less skilled in these arts; Amanda Blanksby, our Social Secretary, for suggesting, planning, arranging and attending almost every social event the Club has held this year; Andrew Jeffries, our Treasurer, for managing our finances and in particular for handling our new insurance coverage and giving guidance on the Constitution; James Field for bringing our website into the new millennium; Irene teRaa for supporting every aspect of the Club's activities and for taking an interest in all the Committee's work; and Carmen Chung for bringing a local perspective to our meetings, for serving as our interpreter and for bringing the Club's regular newsletter back as the Monthly Menu. Finally, I wish to thank Mark Stamper for auditing our accounts this year (and for hinting that he may be prepared to do it again next year).

So now that we've had the big birthday celebration year what does the future have in store for us? I feel that the Club's focus should be on encouraging our members, and maybe in some small way the public at large, to learn about the wider issues facing the sea life in our local waters and how we might help protect what does remain. Recently there have been several more environmentally oriented events for the Club with a few beach cleanings coming to mind from last year. There have also been some small successes in removing sharks fin soup from corporate menus and we will keep up the pressure on this initiative. I hope the Club will continue to support the conservation of the marine environment in the future.

I would like to sum up with my impression of the Club in its 50th year. As noted by the Chairman in his report last year we seem more recently to be promoting the "club" part of our name rather better than the "underwater" part. It appears to me that the success of the Club and its activities lies in the friendship offered by and shared between its members. When asked by people about the Hong Kong Underwater Club I often find myself explaining that the Club is really just a group of friends who go diving and I feel that the most tangible benefit offered by our Club is its familial atmosphere and the close-knit social network that it can provide for its members, especially for those of us who are working away from our homes and families. Given the wide and diverse choice of highlights in the Club's calendar last year my favourite memory would have to be celebrating my birthday with so many of my friends ‚ it occurs to me that most of my friends now also seem to be members of the Club.

I look forward to spending the coming year diving and socialising with friends in Hong Kong.