Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society

The Board of Directors of the Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage So­ciety have announced the appoint­ment of Sandy I4cKinney to the position of Executive Director of the Society.

Ms. McKinney holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from Goddard College, with her undergraduate work done at the National univer­sity of Mexico.

In a recent interview, she stated:

“It’s a real privilege to have the opportunity to step into a position where most of the hard work has already been done. Joan Lang­ley has been enormously helpful in seeing that the transition has been a smooth and productive one, and I am hoping to carry on her good work as well as introduce a few efforts along lines that are of particular interest to me, as a long—time aficionado of Spanish and Latin— American language and history.

~0ne of the things we’re hop­ing to launch during this year is a publishing venture which will in— elude the results of coin and mint research and, as the Big Endeavor,

‘The 1984 East Coast Shipwreck Project Interim Archaeological Report”, which now runs four volumes and will entail a big job of editing, collating and preparing the report in book form~. All our publications will be available to Society members at reduced cost.

“Another important goal is a substantial increase of membership. I think it would be ideal if every­one involved in any way with the important and exciting work being done in the history, salvage, and archaeology of Spanish vessels lost in the Caribbean or along the East Coast of Florida and the Florida Keys would investigate the advanta­ges of belonging to the Society. The more members we have, the more we’ll be able to build an organiza­tion that could be a model for research and documentation of this important chapter in American Mari­time History.”