WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • JUNE 2015 3 Editor’s Note Jeju island was a beautiful setting for a WAS conference, with lush green volcanic hills and a rugged black-lava coastline. A half-day Aquaforum, a first for WAS, was held. It consisted of sets of high-level invited presentations followed by panel discussions. Initial impressions of the success of the event were positive. Honorary Life Member awards were presented to Yoram Avnimelech from Israel and Abdel-Fattah El-Sayed from Egypt. Yeong-Yo Lee from Korea was named as a WAS Fellow. All three plenary addresses were interesting. Jeong YeongHoon provided a good example of planning domains for a national modern aquaculture sector. Kangsen Mai gave a vigorous rebuttal to recent claims made about the global effects of aquaculture in China. Shakuntala Thilstead spoke eloquently and passionately about the way fish contributes to the nutrition of the poor. The conference had good physiology sessions, with interesting presentations on gut microbial ecology, probiotics and digestive enzymes. Both conference presentations by Morten Rye of Akvaforsk were among the best in Jeju, one on the state of global genetic improvement programs for tilapia and the other on the role of shrimp breeding programs in managing current and future disease problems. The latter presentation generated a lively discussion during the Q&A. There are a couple of exciting new developments with potential commercial application to report. Suparat Taengchaiyaphum evaluated Calibrin-Z, a substance that binds to the toxin produced by Vibrio parahaemolyticus, the pathogen that causes EMS. Sandy Shumway demonstrated the effectiveness of a new, low-cost, antifouling surface coating that contains a photoactive catalyst that produces hydrogen peroxide from water and oxygen. There was a Jeju Olive Flounder Day as a side-event to the main conference, dedicated to this iconic fish in Jeju. The postconference tours featured visits to area flatfish farms. My general impression was that the conference program was rather weak. There were a number of sessions with only three or four presentations, some of which were no-shows. The program committee would have done better to aggregate more papers into general sessions. The problem of cancelled presentations, a chronic issue at WAS conferences, seemed to be worse than normal. There was also an issue of many good papers being presented at the beginning of sessions, something that is expected to set the tone or be a keynote for the session, but it created a situation of making difficult decisions about attending talks during that first time slot. We’ll have more on the Jeju meeting in the next issue of the magazine. Tucker Wins Best Article Award To entice contributions of high-quality articles describing original work, the WAS Board of Directors has committed to support an award for the best article published in World Aquaculture magazine. The WAS Awards Committee concurs that an article written by Craig Tucker, Dave Brune and Les Torrans will receive the award as the best of those published in the four magazine issues of 2014. The article, “Partitioned Pond Aquaculture Systems,” took a historical approach to describing the development of this innovative pond production system. Potential contributors should take note that this is monetary award that will be ongoing and made annually. — John A. Hargreaves, Editor-in-Chief World Aquaculture 2015 in Jeju: A Brief Summary and grow its membership to the point that it might form its own association, hopefully with an on-going affiliation with WAS. CoPs are designed to be much more flexible and adaptive than the now moribund WAS working groups. In principal, any group can apply to form a CoP although it requires a committed coordinator who can work with a WAS representative to set up the services that will facilitate the operationalization of the group. As an example we hope that the first CoP formed will be an industry-focused group engaged in the development of Seriola aquaculture. My thanks goes to the Industry Relations committee for developing this initiative. While CoPs are being established primarily for industry members, there is no reason why CoPs cannot form around academic or research issues and we welcome ideas and suggestions for the formation of CoPs from our members. I am proud to have served the Society in this role and, as I step down, I’m happy that the Society is in good health, finances are President, continued from page 2 strong and the initiatives implemented over the last year will see the Society move forward. We have slightly expanded our membership over the past year and I expect further steady if unspectacular growth. I would like to add my sincere thanks to the other three outgoing Board members, Michael Schwarz, the immediate Past President and excellent mentor in the role, and Sandy Shumway and Luis Sampaio, retiring directors who have made valuable contributions to the Society during their terms on the Board. I wish the incoming President Rebecca Lochmann well in the role, although her tenure will be unfortunately short. I urge the new Board and President to maintain a focus on the goal of expanding the reach of the society by focusing on issues of communication and understanding the value proposition to non-members because I continue to believe that they are fundamental to finally driving some growth of the Society’s membership. — Graham Mair, President
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