World Aquaculture March 2019

WWW.WA S.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • MARCH 2019 5 U.S. Aquaculture Society T hank you all for the fantastic opportunity to learn from peers and contribute to the future of USAS by being President. This past year has been great! I was kept busy going to conferences to represent USAS and making constant efforts to monitor the progress of our committee activities and oversee a couple of new endeavors. I will be handing over the USAS Presidency to Angela Caporelli. I (and all other Past Presidents) wish her well in maintaining the activities of the Chapter while keeping an eye on our future. By the time you read this, we will have had another excellent triennial aquaculture conference. This year is the 50th anniversary of WAS and the Journal of the World Aquaculture Society, so I’m sure everyone found the special activities to their liking. I hope everyone had a chance to see old friends, learn a few things, make some new friends and maybe drink a Hurricane or two! Congratulations to Drs. Jim Tidwell, Les Torrens and Craig Tucker, our USAS Life-time Achievement Award winners! I’ve known these guys my whole aquaculture life and know that they are truly deserving! Thanks for the help of the Board and other Committee Chairs with various projects over the year, especially Past-President David Cline (who has served the USAS in several capacities for quite a while), Susan Laramore, Matt Parker and Bill Walton, who have completed their terms. Thanks also to Steve Rawles, who initiated our meeting workshop series years ago and helped get everything organized again this year. And of course, many thanks to the WAS/USAS Home Office team consisting of John Cooksey, Carol Mendoza and Judy Andrasko for support and help throughout the year. They are indispensable and always there to respond to any questions that come up. Welcome to our incoming President-Elect, Matt Parker, our incoming Secretary/Treasurer, Kwamena Quagrainie (having previously served as an at-large Board Member) and our incoming Board Members Lauren Jescovitch and Matt DiMaggio (both have served on several USAS committees in the past). Please encourage them and, if they ask for your help on a Committee within USAS, support them and help us grow for the future! Keep up with the activities of USAS by visiting our website usaquaculture.org . You can find general information about aquaculture in the US, our USAS organization, our USAS continuing education activities (including previous webinars and workshops) and information for students (including activities, award opportunities and information on forming a student sub-unit at their respective institutions). To recap some of the things we accomplished this year: 1) We continue to invest in the future of the USAS by recognizing our students’ accomplishments. At Aquaculture 2019 in New Orleans, we presented student awards and travel scholarships totaling more than $19,000 through the generosity of our sponsors and USAS’s commitment to student members. C H A P T E R R E P O R T S 2) We conducted a survey to learn USAS members’ interests in future webinars, workshops and meeting venues. I know this was important because we had a 26 percent response rate for the survey. We have already undertaken some of these suggestions, and future Boards should revisit these to make sure all are addressed. 3) We were active on social media (Instagram, Twitter and Facebook) and increased our presence by adding two new platforms this year (YouTube and LinkedIn). 4) We sponsored two students to attend the North Carolina Aquaculture meeting and two students to attend the Northeast Aquaculture Conference. These students represented USAS at these meetings by sharing the mission and benefits of joining us. 5) We organized three continuing education workshops that were well-attended for Aquaculture 2019: Best Aquaculture Practices, Commercial Aquaponics and Water Quality. Thanks to our presenters for their time and expertise working on these! 6) We are working on a “coffee table book” about aquaculture in each state of the US and will include relevant statistics. We hope to complete this next year in time for Aquaculture America 2020 in Honolulu. 7) We (along with the NAA and Auburn University) organized an Aquaculture Animal Welfare webinar with over 200 participants when it was live and many more have since watched the recording posted on our website. 8) At the end of January 2019, the USAS membership totaled 1036 members. 9) We (along with the NAA) began organizing an Initiative on Public Education, to get science-based aquaculture information into the hands of our lawmakers and policy officials, but plans didn’t materialize as hoped; we are currently proceeding with plans to hold this in the near future. 10) We (along with the NAA) sent a letter to National Geographic refuting their column that US aquaculture affects migratory birds and showing data to back this up. We didn’t receive a response. 11) Finally, something near and dear to me, we updated our USAS Procedures and Policies (PnP) so that future Officers and Board members will have information from our past Boards to help them ease into their new assignments in an efficient manner. One last thing that nags at me as I reflect on my tenure as the President of USAS: I know our members can respond to surveys, but let’s everyone try to do better when it comes to voting in our elections. All our members are responsible for the success of the USAS. As always, we encourage members of USAS (and all of WAS Chapters) to support and submit your quality manuscripts to JWAS. As I began this column last year, my words to describe my career and experience with USAS so far is: Wow, what a ride! Thanks! —David Straus, President