World Aquaculture March 2019

8 MARCH 2019 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S.ORG C H A P T E R R E P O R T S T his is the year that LACC celebrates its 25th anniversary along with the 50th anniversary of WAS. During a quarter of a century, LACC has worked hard to stimulate aquaculture production in the region. Of course, one may say production is done at the farm but it is also true that it starts earlier, with work at research centers, with governmental programs, and why not say it, with all networking possibilities provided by organizations like LACC. We are at the center of aquaculture production, as our membership encompasses farmers, researchers, students and government officers. This is the beauty of our Chapter: we are the head and the tail of aquaculture, offering all actors an opportunity to interact with each other, to achieve our main goal, which is to produce more and better seafood. Conferences are somehow like Carnival. In Brazil, home of the most famous Carnival in the world (some say), while the organizers celebrate the closure of one year of activity, we hear in the news that they are already thinking about the next one. The same goes for our conferences, which are not planned from one year to another, but require at least 2-3 years to define the host country, choose the most suitable convention center and start working on the conference program, before the inauguration takes place. We are now less than a year to get together in San Jose, Costa Rica, home of LACQUA 2019. A lot has already been done to organize this conference, but there is still a great deal of work before we can say: Welcome to Costa Rica! Our biggest concern in a conference is to give our membership and all participants a great arena for networking, making business and the opportunity to discuss the latest results of ongoing research. LACQUA 2018 in Bogotá received about 500 abstracts between oral and poster presentations and we want to increase the number of contributions for LACQUA 2019 in Costa Rica. During our recent LACC Board meeting, we discussed alternatives to give more value to the poster section. It has been observed not only at LACQUA conferences, but quite often poster presenters fail to have a big audience or do not engage in discussions about their results. We want to increase the impact of poster presentations by introducing a new session to the conference. It is going to be a specific place and time for discussion of poster results and will be led by a couple of chairs who will critically review the results and get the audience to contribute with questions and comments. It is going to be challenging, perhaps not all posters will be mentioned in these discussions, but the idea is to learn more fromwhat we have hanging on the walls of the convention center. Ideas regarding improvement to the poster session are welcome and you can forward your messages to the LACC secretariat at carolina@was.org or using our webpage or social media. During this year, we want to celebrate with you the 25th anniversary of LACC, which will culminate in a great conference in Costa Rica. Begin working on your abstracts and plan your trip to Central America now. You should also keep in mind that your experiences and research results have a place in our publications. Submit your manuscripts to World Aquaculture magazine (you can read it in Spanish in our webpage) and the Journal of the World Aquaculture Society. —Luís André Sampaio, President Latin American and Caribbean Chapter New Book in the WAS Online Store Cleaner FishBiology andAquacultureApplications edited by Jim Treasurer. Cleaner fish are increasingly being deployed in aquaculture as a means of biological control of parasitic sea lice, and consequently the farming of wrasse and lumpfish, the main cleaner fish species in current use in salmon farming, is now one of the fastest expanding aquaculture sectors with over 40 hatcheries in Norway alone. Cleaner Fish Biology and Aquaculture Applications reviews and presents new knowledge on the biology of the utilized cleaner fish species, and provides protocols in cleaner fish rearing, deployment, health and welfare. The latest knowledge is presented on specialist technical areas such as cleaner fish nutrition, genetics, health, immunology and vaccinology, welfare, transport and fisheries. Specific chapters detail cleaner fish developments in the main salmon-producing countries. The book comprehensively addresses the questions of sustainability of cleaner fish use in aquaculture, bottlenecks to the optimum production of cleaner fish, and improvements and best practice in on-farm deployment methods, for optimum survival and enhanced welfare of cleaner fish.