World Aquaculture 2020 Update

World Aquaculture 2020 remains scheduled for December 14-18, 2020. The Steering Committee is working hard to keep track of the developing guidelines and regulations from the Singapore government, international health organizations and other authorities. As these develop, we will be incorporating them into WA2020 to make it the safest and most effective Conference and Exposition possible. We will be keeping you informed of updates on our website as they develop.

In light of the ongoing pandemic associated with COVID-19, the world Aquaculture Conference 2020 is making a call for abstract submission to the special session: COVID19 and Pandemics – Aquaculture and Food Security. The brainstorming session welcomes ideas and solutions to address the impacts of current and future pandemics on production, supply chain, financial biosecurity, marketing channels and E-commerce, science and technology, recovery, sustainability and development, society, and governance. [More..]

Journal of the World Aquaculture Society Editor's Choice Awards for April 2020

The editors of The Journal of the World Aquaculture Society (JWAS) are pleased to announce the Editor's Choice Awards for the April 2020 issue of JWAS. [More..]

The ethics of authorship and preparation of research publications

Part of a journal editor's responsibility relates to ethical issues associated with the articles published in the journal. While the majority of authors who submit articles to the Journal of the World Aquaculture Society (JWAS) adhere routinely to high ethical standards of authorship, there always are a few exceptions. In some cases, the behavior in question appears unintentional, caused by either a lack of understanding of the issues involved or students and young scientists who lack understanding of publishing ethics. In other cases, however, the unethical behavior is deliberate. Whether deliberate or unintentional, however, the consequences for research misconduct from unethical behavior are intolerable and can be severe. This editorial is written to provide clarity about what constitutes ethical and unethical practices related to publishing in scientific journals and to encourage authors to adhere to them when submitting to JWAS. [More..]

Journal of the World Aquaculture Society Editor's Choice Awards for February 2020

The editors of The Journal of the World Aquaculture Society (JWAS) are pleased to announce the Editor's Choice Awards for the February 2020 issue of JWAS. [More..]

COVID-19 Information Sources

In order to help you to obtain information about aquaculture and COVID19, we have complied a list of aquaculture media websites that you can check out as many are reporting aquaculture activities relating to COVID19. See list [More..]

The Singapore Aquaculture Industry — Contributing to Singapore’s Food Security

In Singapore, local food fish farms produce around 10 percent of Singapore’s consumption of food fish. As Singapore envisions production of 30 percent of Singapore’s nutritional needs locally by 2030, Singapore’s aquaculture industry needs to transform and adopt technology to raise productivity, strengthen climate resilience and overcome Singapore’s resource constraints. Some farms have already developed innovations such as floating closed containment farming systems and adopted Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions. There is also an increasingly vibrant aquaculture R&D ecosystem that works closely with the industry to develop solutions and address technology gaps in the sector. In solving its own challenges, Singapore has the potential to become a leader in tropical aquaculture technology and develop innovations that can benefit the world. [More..]

Editor's Note - Black Swans and Aquaculture

A Black Swan is an event that is rare, unpredictable and has profound and disruptive impacts, something random with a large deviation from normal. The current global disease pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus is an exemplary Black Swan event. An influential book published in 2007 on the subject of Black Swans, written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, was subtitled “the impact of the highly improbable.” In 2012, the US National Intelligence Council published Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds that identified eight Black Swans, with a severe pandemic disease outbreak topping the list. New terms like flattening the infection curve and social distancing have entered popular lexicon. [More..]

The successes of the reinvigoration and the vision for the next four years

The Journal of the World Aquaculture Society (JWAS) is a special publication among the aquaculture literature. It is a scientific journal “devoted to the advancement of technological innovations and solutions to major issues facing the growth of global aquaculture.” It is also a society publication and represents the World Aquaculture Society (WAS) membership and the Society's goals to disseminate high quality information, “focusing on global aquaculture science, growth of aquaculture industries, and development and growth of sustainable aquaculture enterprises of all scales.” The journal must therefore fulfill goals of scientific value and performance as well as satisfy the valid demands of the society membership. [More..]

Abstracts for Aquaculture America 2020 Published

The abstracts being presented for the February 8 - 12 meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii have been published to our website. Please take a moment to review the meeting presentations [More..]

The key role of functional aquafeeds to achieve a more sustainable aquaculture

Aquaculture's unparalleled growth cannot be achieved at the expense of environmental and social responsibilities. Efficient policies and legal frameworks are needed to safeguard sustainable and equitable aquaculture development with generalized and improved socioeconomic benefits to players along the production and value chain.

The need to decrease the dependence on fish meal and fish oil in the formulation of suitable aquafeeds for cultured species (especially marine) has long been recognized by the aquaculture sector. The stagnation of world fisheries, along with the decreasing trend of fish captures destined for non-food uses (Food and Agriculture Organization, 2018), has prompted the aquafeed sector to explore alternative ingredients, either marine or land based. Although this search has often pointed toward a number of alternative protein sources, the sustainability of using such alternative ingredients has often been questioned. For instance, soy-based protein produc [More..]

RAS believers making an early stand on American soil

Domestically produced, fresh Atlantic salmon is hitting the U.S. marketplace. That’s nothing new.

What is new is that these fish aren’t from traditional ocean-based farms. They’re from land-based aquaculture facilities in places most people wouldn’t expect.

For industry insiders, the emergence of land-based aquaculture is not too surprising, seen as a response to demand for Atlantic salmon and locally produced food with a low environmental footprint. Despite the considerable expense to build a suitable facility that can produce fish at commercial scale, two prominent producers are making waves with this market-leading species, recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) and are poised to make an early stand in the United States.

The first RAS producer to bring Atlantic salmon to market did so this past July, when Superior Fresh LLC harvested its first batch at its facility in Northfield, Wisc., a thousand miles from the nearest ocean.
[More..]

A perspective of the future value and challenges of genetic engineering in aquaculture

Within the last decade, advancements in genetic engineering technologies have increased the efficiency at which these techniques can be applied in animals, including fish. An animal is considered genetically engineered if its DNA has been intentionally and artificially altered to achieve a specific trait. The most common genetic engineering strategies include transgenics and gene editing, the latter of which likely has the greatest potential to advance the genetics of food production. [More..]

Journal of the World Aquaculture Society Editor's Choice Awards for October 2019

The editors of The Journal of the World Aquaculture Society (JWAS) are pleased to announce the Editor's Choice Awards for the October 2019 issue of JWAS. [More..]

Abstracts for LACQUA19 Published

The abstracts that were presented at the November 19 - 22 meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica have been published to our website. Please take a moment to review the presentations that were given during the meeting. [More..]

The Failure of MUMS and Aquaculture Indexing

For those of us around in the late 1990s and early 2000s as members of the Minor Use and Minor Species (MUMS) coalition, there was probably nothing as significant or important as the effort to change the way we approve drugs and therapeutants for aquaculture animals. Until then all animals were treated the same when it came to getting a label through the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), including a lengthy and cost-prohibitive approval process. All major species — domestic dogs and cats, cattle, pigs, horses and poultry — have markets large enough to justify the high costs of traditional labeling, but how do you get a drug for a parakeet, an alpaca or a dwarf cichlid? MUMS! [More..]