10 MARCH 2018 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WAS.ORG TOWARD THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF AQUACULTURE Marc Verdegem is an associate professor with the Department of Animal Sciences of Wageningen University. He is a specialist in aquaculture production systems, concentrating on water quality management and pollution control. His research focuses on understanding and managing interactions between feed input, animal performance and water quality in rearing systems. Below is the quintessence of our conversation, held on 13 January 2017. Rodrigue Yossa: How would you describe the ideal aquaculture scientist? Marc Verdegem: An aquaculture scientist is not really different from other scientists. In this sense an aquaculture scientist needs to be very critical and also explorative and curious to learn and to look up the frontiers of aquaculture science. A scientist must be ethical regarding the practice of science and the people s/he is interacting with. In addition, as aquaculture is an applied science, knowledge from other fields such as chemistry and physics have to be combined with biology. Moreover, because aquaculture is developing very fast, such a scientist needs to be willing to constantly learn new things and look into other fields, which makes aquaculture science very dynamic. Rodrigue Yossa: How would you describe the ideal aquaculture producer? Marc Verdegem: It is not easy to give a precise description of the ideal aquaculture producer because the types of activities in aquaculture are very diverse and it is difficult to make a living in some aquaculture businesses. However, an aquaculture producer should work to develop an enterprise that is profitable, should have a feeling regarding her/his market, commercial activities and customers’ needs, and should think from production and business perspectives. Hence, the technical, organizational, ethical, environmental and commercial activities of the farm should be well combined and managed to make the aquaculture production financially profitable. Rodrigue Yossa: What do you think are the main challenges of aquaculture in the short, medium and long run? Marc Verdegem: Aquaculture is under a lot of scrutiny from the public and the perception that people have about aquaculture differs very much from one region to another in the world. In the western world (North America and Europe), aquaculture is something new. Our society hardly accepts that there is another type of agricultural activity in the water and does not give aquaculture room to develop to the same level as is the case with terrestrial agriculture. When people grow cows, corn, etc. there is a nutrient loss that is quite well accepted by the public, but when it comes to aquaculture, effluent nutrients are more criticized. It is much more difficult for the public to accept that the nutrient retention efficiency in fish is more or less the same as with terrestrial animals and that there are sustainable ways to deal with effluent nutrients from aquaculture facilities. The public perception regarding aquaculture is a major challenge. We should try to convince the public that, when it comes to criticizing aquaculture, one should use the same criteria that are used with terrestrial agriculture. When you consider Southeast Asia, where aquaculture has a longer history, aquaculture is well accepted as another aspect of agriculture. The challenge here is to implement sustainable practices, allowing production for generations to come. At present, in many cases, insufficient care is taken of the production environment. Aquaculture receives a lot of goodwill because there is a growing debate globally about the “blue revolution,” which is considered as a new frontier for food production. Here the challenge is that we need to venture into this new frontier in a way that we don’t overshoot the capacity of the environment to produce aquatic food for human consumption. If aquaculture continues to develop at the same rate as now, new aquatic products will become available to the public, which will be more inclined to accept “blue” products. In the long term, we need to convince more people to become aquaculture scientists. The demand for scientific knowledge is great because we work with many more aquatic species compared to terrestrial agriculture. This demand for technical knowledge will be greater in the future, if we want to reach the ambition that aquaculture is a sustainable and essential part of global food security. We need more people working in aquaculture given the growing role that aquaculture is playing in food security globally. A Conversation with Marc Verdegem Rodrigue Yossa Marc Verdegem
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