WWW.WAS.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • MARCH 2018 7 CHAPTER REPORTS Three months have passed (once again) since my last column and I have exciting news that three new members will be joining the Board of the Asian Pacific Chapter very soon. The President-elect is Rohana P. Subasinghe, who will begin his responsibilities during APA18 in Taiwan, and two new Directors are Jean-Yves Mevel and Agung Sudaryono, who will also come on board at the same time. I would like to congratulate the incoming board members and welcome them to the team, and I look forward to meeting them during our annual board meeting in April. I have great respect for all the candidates, elected or otherwise, who have shown willingness to dedicate their precious time to the chapter. I would also like to extend my appreciation to all our members for taking the time to vote for the candidates preferred to represent them and take action for the APC in the years to come. Preparation for the APA18 conference in Taiwan is on track and the steering committee is working hard to ensure that it will be successful. All booths have sold out and registrations are still being received, although the deadline for submission of abstracts has passed. The conference steering committee met for a third time on 12 February to coordinate final preparations. I am convinced that it will be a fruitful and successful conference in Taiwan this year! In a similar vein, preparation for APA19 (Chennai) and WA2020 (Singapore) are also on track. More updates will be available in the near future. Workshops in India and conferences in India and Indonesia that took place during the end of 2017 were an enormous success and the APC has proudly welcomed new members once more. The APC board is considering future workshops and I encourage our chapter members, readers of World Aquaculture, and officials working in our industry to contact us yet again if there are any training topics considered crucial for the development of sustainable aquaculture in the region. We have been elected to support efforts in this regard and I can assure you that the Board is very receptive and committed to this objective! In May, Offshore Mariculture Asia 2018 will be coming to Asia (Singapore) for the first time ever. In anticipation of the expected growth of offshore mariculture in Asia in the coming years, we are proud to formally support this event. I look forward to announcing a few more of these opportunities via our Facebook and Twitter (@WASAPC) accounts. Also, to encourage ground-breaking developments in our field, we have agreed to be partners in the MATCh - Mekong Agritech Challenge, which is sponsored by the Asian Development Bank and Australian Aid and aims to provide support and mentorship to start-up companies in Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar and Vietnam. I am confident that we will receive many applications for this Challenge and nurture the next generation of aquaculture frontrunners with this award. Regarding administrative matters, guidelines for our board members are complete and I trust that these will support their day-today activities. I will speak at the WAS meeting in Las Vegas during the end of February to present an overview of our activities during the last six months. In addition, in the very near future, the APC will launch a member survey to ask for your feedback on our work and we will subsequently present these results during the APA18 member meeting. Before I close my column, I would like to wholeheartedly thank our departing board members for their endless hard work, ensuring the Chapter fulfills its commitments to develop sustainable aquaculture in the region. It has been a pleasure working with all of you. On behalf of the Board, I wish you great success in your work and I hope to bring you more great news three months from now. — Guillaume Drillet, President Asian Pacific Chapter This issue’s selected research publication from the Journal of the World Aquaculture Society is “Dissolved Oxygen and Aeration in Ictalurid Catfish Aquaculture,” by Claude E. Boyd, Eugene L. Torrans and Craig S. Tucker. Dissolved oxygen management in pond-based aquaculture is critical to successful commercial production of many species. The authors provide a comprehensive review of the dynamics of dissolved oxygen in aquaculture ponds and hatcheries and the evolution of its management through mechanical aeration over time in ictalurid catfish aquaculture. The paper addresses the factors that affect dissolved oxygen concentration in ponds, the relationship between fish feeds and oxygen budgets in ponds, oxygen as a Recent Research Highlight from the Journal of the World Aquaculture Society limiting factor in fish well-being, and factors that affect oxygen uptake by catfish in ponds. The paper traces the history of aeration and aerator design for catfish farming, inter-woven with discussion of relevant principles of mechanical aeration and summaries of aerator performance testing. While this review is based on many years of research in the U.S. catfish industry, the detailed information presented is applicable globally to feed-based pond production of a wide variety of species. This paper can be found in the Journal of the World Aquaculture Society 49(1):7-70, available as Open Access at onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ journal/10.1111/jwas.12426, or under Publications at www.was.org. — Carole Engle, Executive Editor, JWAS
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