12 JUNE 2017 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WAS.ORG TOWARD THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF AQUACULTURE Barry Costa-Pierce is the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Professor, Chair of the Department of Marine Sciences and Director of the Marine Science Center at the University of New England. He has a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Hawaii and an M.Sc. from the University of Vermont. His research interests are in “ocean food ecosystems”: how seafood systems throughout the world interact with marine ecosystems, fisheries, aquaculture, and people. He has spent his career developing local to global scientific and educational programs and partnerships. He has lived and worked as a scientist in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. He is widely recognized as a pioneer of the field of “Ecological Aquaculture” and led the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s development of the global protocols for an “Ecosystems Approach to Aquaculture.” Before coming to Maine, he spent 11 years as a Professor of Fisheries and Aquaculture and the Director of the Rhode Island Sea Grant College Program at the University of Rhode Island. In 2011, he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Below is the quintessence of our conversation, held on 10 November 2016. Rodrigue Yossa: Why have you chosen to work in aquaculture? Barry Costa-Pierce: Aquaculture has given me a lifetime of opportunities to work in a transdisciplinary space where I can interact with social scientists, communities, and the industry, rather than being just another academic. In aquaculture, there is more than just the sciences such as biology, ecology, physics or math, because there are relationships with the industry, social sciences, and the governance systems. I wanted to have a career in “real reality,” not only of just being in an academic island in a society. Rodrigue Yossa: How would you describe the ideal aquaculture scientist? Barry Costa-Pierce: I feel strongly that if you are developing aquaculture in places where there is potential for expansion, then you need a more broader connection and conversation with fisheries and other fields such as water quality, oceanography and limnology. An ideal aquaculture scientist should not just get deep into his/her main aquaculture disciplinary area such as aquaculture genetics, reproduction, or nutrition, but also have a broader training in ecology/ environmental sciences, sociology, and the political sciences, and be exposed to economics and other fields that are connected to the success of aquaculture production. Rodrigue Yossa: How would you describe the ideal aquaculture producer? Barry Costa-Pierce: An ideal aquaculture producer is always at the cutting edge of innovation, whether that is technology or monitoring, or what is the best broodstock or developing new integrated system, all done in partnership with economic agents and communities. Some producers are trying to “recreate the wheel.” If they had partnership with academia for instance, they would be at the cutting edge with research now, not 10-20 years ago. For positive examples of this, research-intensive farms have strong connections to the state-of-the-art information that guides them in innovations that can improve their business. Partnerships with academia are even more important for producers in economically developing countries, as a strong connection with their local and regional institutes will be highly beneficial to farms. In the western countries, some large aquaculture companies have enough money so that they can either invest in their own science infrastructures, which might be as sophisticated if not more so than those of universities, and such companies can hire scientists as consultants or collaborators. Rodrigue Yossa: What do you think are the main challenges of aquaculture? Barry Costa-Pierce: Aquaculture is a “Johnny-come-lately” to the ocean as well as freshwaters systems such as large lakes. These areas of the planet have had fisheries for hundreds if not thousands of years, so they are already “occupied” areas. As the world population has increased, that space was occupied by trade and shipping, then tourism and recreation, and now oil and gas development. So, when you look over the potential water bodies that could be used for aquaculture, there is a lot of competition for space because there are a lot of possible uses of that space. The biggest challenge for open-water aquaculture will be to convince existing and aspiring users that there is another way to sustainably and economically add more value to the existing occupancy of water space. Unless there is enough space in openwater areas, aquaculture won’t easily develop there. On land, it is a different situation because you can have tenure of the land where you do aquaculture. The biggest constraint there is whether or not you can make money, not spending all your financial resources in expensive capital infrastructure, and making your way in competition with imports. The biggest constraints in inland aquaculture are therefore the A Conversation with Barry Costa-Pierce Rodrigue Yossa
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