WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • DECEMBER 3 By the time this is published in World Aquaculture, I will have already completed my term as current President of the Asian Pacific Chapter of WAS and started my term as Immediate Past President. Before I welcome the new APC Board, I would like to summarize progress of the APC during my (very) long term and thank those having an influential role in our successes. When I joined the APC Board after the APA2009 meeting in Kuala Lumpur, I don’t believe that I really had any idea what I was getting into. I knew that I wanted to serve WAS and felt that the appropriate place to do this was in the Asian Pacific Chapter but always had seen myself as first being on the APC Board as a Director, not coming in as President-Elect. Now, four years later, I have served as PresidentElect for one year and President for almost three. This has been a significant personal time commitment and I am looking forward to stepping back a bit into the position of Immediate Past President. I will continue to have an important role leading the Past President’s Committee, the Election Committee and as Chair of the Executive Advisory Council (EAC). I also am on the Steering Committee for World Aquaculture 2015 in Jeju, Korea, so I will continue my service to WAS for some time to come. When I became President of APC after APA2011 in Kochi, India, I sat with the then new Immediate Past President, Roy Palmer, and discussed what we thought needed to happen to make the APC a stronger, larger and more influential chapter. We discussed finally setting our chapter borders, thought about creating Country Ambassadors and the formation of the EAC. The APC Board worked together to try several new ideas. As expected, some worked and some did not, but we learned a lot, and this is important as we strive to be more dynamic. The overall goal was to make the APC a more relevant and active chapter that worked to get new people on the APC Board and to create a conduit for APC members to advance to serve on the WAS Board. We also started to think about other ways to create value for chapter members through the organization and promotion of smaller events that don’t rise to the level of regional meetings like the Australasian and Asian Pacific Aquaculture conferences and trade shows. This idea led to several symposia during my term, with one in Al Ain, UAE (Arid Land Aquaculture) to recognize and encourage membership and aquaculture in this part of the APC region, and the other in Kagoshima, Japan (High Value Marine Finfish Aquaculture) to recognize the merging of the Asian Pacific and Japan Chapters and to show APC’s commitment to the Japanese aquaculture industry. We also reviewed and updated the APC Bylaws and brought our website up to date, both processes that continue. We were an important voice for change on the WAS Board, constantly pushing for more aggressive approaches to getting the “World” in WAS to be more of a reality. We want to see WAS as the organization that professional aquaculturists feel they should join, and to grow WAS, especially in the APC region. Those working on the APC Board are volunteers, but we were able to accomplish many things and I hope to see the continuation of many of these efforts and continual improvement in the years to come. In the near future, we hope to roll out a new website with additional functionality for APC members and to see the creation of an APC secretariat that will put a full-time emphasis on growing WAS in the APC region. Both should make WAS more relevant and useful to stakeholders in the region that is the largest source of aquaculture products in the world. As of this writing, the APA2013 Conference and Trade show has not yet happened in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, but I expect that it will have been a great success. I pushed hard for the meeting to be held in HCMC and, with the leadership of the (now) current President, Amrit Bart (who was also the Steering Committee Chair for this event), we have seen the expected size of this event grow. I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention the Australasian Aquaculture 2012 Conference and Trade Show that was held in Melbourne. We had another first for the APC Chapter there, where a pre-conference event on a simulated seafood health scare helped to bring keen minds together on how issues like this should be addressed in industry. So, some specific thanks are required before I finish my final report. Roy Palmer, who is now off the APC Board, has been a strong voice, tireless worker and constant touchstone for how we can make our chapter better. Wayne O’Connor, who will continue in the role of Secretary/Treasurer, has been a pleasure to work with and always ready to make the extra effort. (He is also the Program Manager for the APA2013 meeting.) Some specific APC Directors to thank are Ram Bhujel, Zuridah Merican, Gay Marsden and Mark Oliver. Each has significantly contributed to the evolution of our chapter into something that is being shaped for the future. I welcome the new President, Amrit Bart, the President Elect, Farshad Shishehchian and the new APC Board and hope that they can continue to build on the work that has been done to date. I look forward to continuing to serve on the Board until my Past-President term ends in two years and to be able to focus more on specific issues relative to committee work. Thank you again to everyone for their hard work during my (almost three-year) term and for allowing me to serve both the Asian Pacific Chapter and the World Aquaculture Society. It has been an honor and a privilege and I hope to see the APC and WAS continue to grow and improve in the future. — Lukas Manomaitis, President Asian Pacific Chapter CHAPTER REPORTS The APC Board worked together to try several new ideas. As expected, some worked and some did not, but we learned a lot, and this is important as we strive to be more dynamic.
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