Wow! Linda Ridley is now officially the 6th entrant into the Golden Hamlet Club (GHC) which has as its main membership requirement entrants having completed 1,000 fish id surveys. Linda Ridley joins Lad Akins, Linda Baker, Judie Clee, Peter Leahy, Linda Schillinger (what is it with the name Linda anyway, maybe should be renamed the Linda Hamlet Club?). This really is a tremendous achievement and those of you who survey regularly understand just how much work goes into completing 100 surveys and submitting all that data , now imagine 1,000 surveys.

Beyond surveying, Linda Ridley does a lot of outreach for REEF where she lives on Bonaire in the Netherland Antilles. Linda's in- and out-of-the-water instruction and mentorship in conducting REEF surveys represents a plateau for our members to strive towards achieving. When our Golden Hamlet members are in the water assessing fish populations, REEF gives them the same status as our staff get when surveying. In fact, the current GH members represent over 7 percent of our surveys in the database! Surveying at this level is certainly a laudatory achievement and requires a unique diving/surveying acumen. So our masks go off to Linda Ridley, congratulations from our REEF staff, Board of Directors, and all of our members!

Visit our "Top 10" page to view a listing of top surveyors for all of REEF's regions!

[img_assist|nid=3079|title=Official Golden Hamlet Image by Eleanor Pigman|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=320|height=180][img_assist|nid=3080|title=Linda Ridley Conducting her 1,000th survey!|desc=Photo by Chile Ridley|link=none|align=left|width=320|height=240]