Another excellent meeting of the South Thames group of the Club was held on March 4th 2000. Smoothly organised by those Surrey Stalwarts, Joan Tubbs and Vaughan Dodge, it took place, as usual, in the St Mary's Church hall, where copious refreshments and a good lunch were served. Some 32 members attended, and enjoyed three lecturettes in the morning before lunch, and the gossip meeting in the afternoon.

In the morning Carel Sartory kicked off with a talk on the Pycnogonids - the sea spiders. These 'Science fiction' animals are not that common in British waters, but are always interesting to examine when found, and feed on sea anemones and other soft-bodied animals. Gerald Legg (from the Brighton Museum) followed, keeping to the arthropod theme, by describing his favourite animals, the pseudoscorpions. They have curious and unusual mating habits with the males guarding the eggs. Finally Tony Saunders-Davies talked about a unique large marine lagoon, the Fleet, in Dorset, behind Chesil Beach. He described the site, and talked about some of the problems of the rotifer distribution there.

Over the years this has taken on the character of a meeting of old friends, since the regular participants keep coming back for more!

Far left: Carel Sartory answers questions on the sea spiders. Left: Gerald Legg shows pictures of some of his favourite pseudoscorpions

Right: Gerald talks about the details of the anatomy of a pseudoscorpion to Ven Dodge. Far right:Mark Burgess looks on in the background while Phil Greaves explains a fine point (probably about a tardigrade!) to Vaughan Dodge