Food for thought
There’s much to digest at September conference - from ea er fish resear h to the e et mpa t of es apees
Details of Aquaculture Europe 2016 have now been finalised, with the conference in Edinburgh from September 20-23 aimed at bringing the latest academic research to as wide an audience as possible.
EAS president Sachi Kaushik said the organisers received more than 600 submissions and have had to make di cult but judicious choices to design the sessions for creating conditions for stimulating links between science and industry’.
On the first full day of the conference, September 21, there will be a celebration of EAS’s 40th anniversary before the packed agenda gets underway.
Among the highlights on day one will be the Cleaner FisU: Biology and Management session, chaired by Stirling’s Herve Migaud, and featuring 16 individual presentations. These will focus on everything from the personality of lumpfish to the history and mystery of ballan wrasse’, and from functional feeds in juvenile lumpfish to the comparative summer behaviour of wild and farmed ballan wrasse.
Opti ising he Production o Echinoder s ephalopods and rus acea will look at a range of different species, including sea cucumbers, sea urchins, European lobster, white shrimp, octopus, cuttlefish and barnacles.
The ARRAINA (Advanced Research nitiatives for Nutrition and Aquaculture) projects are the subject of another daylong session, with presentations on early nutritional programming, and the in uence of dietary micronutrients on the growth of Atlantic salmon among the highlights.
Stirling’s Brendan McAndrew will chair the session on the Application o enetics and eno ics in A uacul ure, with talks on precocious maturity in Atlantic salmon, comparing the gut and skin microbiome in hatchery reared and wild salmon, and how sex determination in Nile tilapia varies among populations.
Advances in Recirculation and losed on ain en S s e s will be considered in relation to a variety of species, including Atlantic salmon, sturgeon and African ca ish.
An a ernoon session for students, chaired by Antonios Charlaris, will take an in-depth look at knowledge transfer in aquaculture. ndustry perspectives will be provided by SPAROS of Portugal, BioMar and the Sco sh Salmon Producers’ Organisation’s ain Berrill.
Later, student award winners will deliver presentations titled Aquaculture as a way of living’, An introduction to aquaculture stories from the sole’, and Shrimp in bio oc addressing a viral challenge’. There will then be a panel discussion.
Also on the Wednesday, onsu ers abelling and erti cation will be examined, with speakers addressing issues such as the image of aquaculture in the media, a tudes towards farmers in Norway, and the perception of new products.
The following day will kick off with Sainsbury’s Ally Dingwall offering a retailer’s perspective, before the parallel sessions get underway. Scientists from across Europe and beyond will present their research on iversi cation in Fin sh Production.
Emerging candidate species for the expansion of European aquaculture, solving the bottlenecks in the commercial production of Atlantic