WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • SEPTEMBER 2014 9 (CONTINUED ON PAGE 10) Climate change and aquaculture issues are becoming increasingly prominent at recent aquaculture organization meetings. This past June, the World Aquaculture Society (WAS) and the Aquaculture Association of Canada (AAC) co-hosted a Special Symposium on Climate Change and Aquaculture at Aquaculture Canada 2014. Less than a week later, the session Climate Change Ready-Management Strategies for the Future was held at World Aquaculture 2014 in Adelaide. These sessions provided some excellent and at times sobering presentations. For those who did not attend and wish to stay abreast, some session highlights are detailed below. Special Symposium on Climate Change at Aquaculture Canada 2014 Aquaculture Canada 2014 was held in the seaside town of St. Andrews, New Brunswick, the first week of June. The symposium plenary speaker, Dr. Keith Brander, was a lead author on Working Reports for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and consequently awarded a share of the Nobel Peace Prize for the 4th report in 2007. In his talk, Dr. Brander reviewed the latest IPCC working report (that became available in October 2013) and contextualized the findings for aquaculture and fisheries. He discussed such influences as extreme weather events, disease spread, rising seas and effects on growth rates. Brander stated that preparation for and adaptation to climate change needs to be considered at all time-scales, from short-term forecasting to longterm strategic planning by industry. In the follow-up discussion Brander emphasized the following message: climate change is happening now, it is manmade, and it is bad, but there is something we can do about it. Gregor Reid discussed the need to revisit temperature effects on aquaculture in light of pending climate change. If temperature alone is considered, a Thermal Growth Coefficient model suggests Atlantic salmon in Atlantic Canada will reach market size two months quicker with an average temperature increase of 1 C. However, Reid says that this is not realistic, with many confounding temperature effects, ranging from reproductive to disease influences, and these effects will occur in consort. There are likely too many unknowns to assume reliable growth prediction under increasing temperatures. The recent workshop Climate Change and Aquaculture in Atlantic Canada, hosted by The Prince Edward Island (PEI) Aquaculture Alliance in partnership with the University of PEI Climate Change Lab, was summarized by Peter Warris. The workshop, held in March 2014, included presentations from industry, academia and government on climatic changes in Atlantic Canada, potential impacts on aquaculture (shellfish health, invasive Climate Change Sessions Increasingly Prominent at Aquaculture Meetings Gregor K. Reid and Timothy Jackson
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