WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • JUNE 2013 9 with total assets in excess of $400,000, and a well-balanced annual operating budget. The membership trend within WAS continues to be strong (Table 1). One of our main initiatives this year is engagement on numerous fronts towards increasing membership and activity in traditionally under-represented regions of the world, with special emphasis in India and Southeast Asia. This will be achieved through programming initiatives implemented by WAS chapters and new and enhanced programming and activities within the WAS Affiliations, Promotion and Membership, and Electronic Networking Committees. Beyond simply increasing global membership, an important aspect is new programming that will be oriented towards retaining members through enhanced outreach, interaction, participation, and representation. We have established a one-year ad-hoc subcommittee within the WAS Elections Committee. The charges for this subcommittee are 1) updating the Election Committee’s Policies and Procedures to address procedural limitations recently encountered and 2) improving the transparency of the committee’s policies and procedures and increasing the geographic diversity of WAS leadership and board representation. To enhance global representation in WAS leadership, we can only achieve so much with policies and procedures. Leadership and WAS representation is traditionally drawn from members who have actively engaged in prior service to the Society and demonstrated capacity, intent, and commitment. To this end, I encourage everyone to engage and participate in the activities of the chapters and parent society to the extent possible and encourage your professional friends and colleagues to do the same. If you have an interest in serving or have questions, comments and suggestions for the WAS leadership, I urge you to reach out and let us know. As we are a member-driven society, the more input and engagement we have from the membership, the more we can represent and provide the services and support our membership expects. Another initiative underway is the development of a chapter and parent society Information Officers program. This program is envisioned to become a significant benefit of WAS membership. While currently under conceptual development, the idea is to provide dynamic communication and information dissemination within and among chapters and the parent society, and to do so in a timely and dynamic fashion. The Electronic Networking Committee (origin of the initiative) has been delegated with the responsibility of developing a proposal that details costs, objectives, and anticipated outcomes to the membership. This proposal will be presented to the Board of Directors at the mid-year board meeting for consideration. Speaking of meetings, the triennial Aquaculture 2012 meeting this past February in Nashville was a tremendous success. There were almost 2,500 attendees and a fully-booked trade show with excellent reports from vendors about the venue, booth traffic, and business they were able to conduct. In this regard, congratulations for a job well done to the Cooksey’s, Mario Stahl, the Home Office staff, the Conference Steering and Program Committees, and all the other critically important groups and individuals required to organize and implement such a large and more importantly successful conference! There was also a very important and new approach to giving value to being a member of WAS in March. The Asian Pacific Chapter of WAS organized a two-day symposium on Arid Land Aquaculture in the United Arab Emirates, followed by a two day workshop on RAS and aquaponics. This was an ambitious and novel undertaking by the APC and by all reports the meeting went very well. The idea of holding smaller, targeted events and symposia is meant to generate more interest in specific geographic areas and on specific topics that are not typically addressed by other WAS events. The next planned APC event is a symposium on High Value Marine Fish Aquaculture that will be held this October in Kagoshima, Japan. As for the Arid Land Aquaculture event, interest was expressed to do this again in the Middle East by the participants and there has also been interest expressed by the Latin American and Caribbean Chapter to conduct such a meeting in northern Mexico. As the planning for these moves ahead we will keep you updated. There are numerous scheduled meetings on the agenda through 2014 so be sure to review your 2013-2014 travel agendas and make room for these venues to attend if you are able. Asian Pacific Aquaculture 2013 will also serve as the occasion for the mid-year WAS Board meeting. Once again I want to urge everyone in the Society to let the Officers and Directors know how we are doing and what else we can or should be doing to serve your needs better. You, the membership, elected us to these positions to listen and serve as best able, so let us know if there are new activities or initiatives you would like to see the Society undertake, and anything else that would make the Society of increased benefit to you. Also, look for forthcoming announcements soliciting nominations to the WAS 2014-2015 Elections Ballot. Please engage the parent society and its chapters, and help us serve our membership, society, and industry at large. — Michael Schwarz, President President’s Column, continued from page 2 aquaculture books, it is not a stand-alone resource but will be an important resource for any aquaculture specialist or student. It is easy to follow with many good references for additional reading. My personal preference would have been to have more species examples within each system chapter and to have included production capacities for each system based on species and Book Review, continued from page 7 management practices. Personal preferences aside, I recommend it to aquaculture enthusiasts and those who have not yet figured out what aquaculture is all about. EDITOR’S NOTE: Aquaculture Production Systems is available through the on-line store at the WAS website.
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