8 June 2012 Student activities and awards in Las Vegas Student activities in Las Vegas were highlighted by a free field trip to the Mandalay Bay Aquarium and Shark Reef, coordinated by Aaron Watson. After lunch, the students took a tour of Acrylic Aquariums. The field trip was sponsored by ten suppliers to commercial aquaculture in the USA. These include Aquaculture Systems Technologies, MDM Inc., Polytank, Inc., R&B Aquatic Distribution, Inc., AquaLogic, Aquatic Eco-Systems, Inc., Performance Pro Pumps, Emperor Aquatics, Inc., Hydro Composites, LLC and RK2 Systems. The students were extremely grateful for the generous support provided by these suppliers. As is custom at US Chapter meetings, the USAS presented student awards at an early-evening dinner function for students. The Spotlight Award was very competitive this year, with three excellent short (3-min) presentations given in succession during the opening plenary by graduate students of their research, truly a high-pressure moment. These three students were also selected as winners of USAS Best Abstract and Travel Awards. The Spotlight Awards give prominence to up-and-coming scientists. Brought to the Chapter by Wendy Sealey, the feature continues to be tweaked but is rapidly becoming yet another good reason to come to the plenary. This year’s Spotlight Award First Place went to Joshua T. Patterson of LSU for his work with gulf killifish (Intraspecific variation in reproductive potential with body size in female gulf killifish Fundulus grandis). Fernando O. Mardones, one of the Spotlight Award finalists, received recognition for his modeling of disease transmission (Modeling transmission of infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus in juvenile Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha). The other Spotlight Award finalist was Chris G. Hooley of USFWS, Bozeman, Montana, who presented his work on tilapia diets and stress (Examination of the effects of dietary protein and lipid levels on growth and stress tolerance of tilapia Oreochromis niloticus). Other awards presented at Aquaculture America 2012 include: • Carlin M. Fenn of Illinois University at Carbondale received the Best Student Abstract award from the US Aquaculture Society and the American Fisheries Society - Fish Culture Section for “Efficacy of Aqui-S® as a sedative for handling and cortisol suppression in pallid sturgeon.” • Blake Hauptman of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, Bozeman, Montana was awarded First Place for Best Presentation for “Evaluation of the ability of ethanol From left to right, USAS President Gary Fornshell, Joshua Patterson, WAS President Ricardo Martino, USAS PastPresident Michael Schwarz. From left to right, USAS President Gary Fornshell, Fernando Mardones, WAS President Ricardo Martino, USAS PastPresident Michael Schwarz. yeast to replace fish meal in the diets of juvenile rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss.” Receiving the award for runner-up for Best Presentation was Noel Novelo of Louisiana State University for “Formulating an ultrasound imaging classification system for the channel catfish ovarian cycle.”
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