World Aquaculture December 2020

4 DECEMBER 2020 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S.ORG C H A P T E R R E P O R T S W e have two announcements for this end of the year that are important activities for the Latin American and Caribbean Chapter. The first is related to the election of two new members for our Board of Directors. We are holding elections for one Director and the Chapter Secretary, to replace current Board members Karina Ribeiro of Brazil and Nelson Peña of Costa Rica, respectively. We have received numerous nominations and will now finalize the ballot that will be circulated among all members for election. The election period extends from 30 November to 15 January and results will be announced on 21 January. Newly elected Board members will take possession of their positions at our yearly Board meeting this coming March and will serve the Board for two years, until the 2022 LACQUA convention. We invite you to review the candidates and participate in this election process. The Nominees have agreed to support the activities of the Chapter and contribute to the expansion of the World Aquaculture Society mission in the region. We are grateful for their support. This column is a great opportunity to thank Karina and Nelson for their good work during these two last years. Both have been key in making sure LACQUA keeps improving and contributing to the dissemination of scientific and technical knowledge related to aquaculture, promoting our activities through our various digital platforms and recruiting newmembers. I knowwe will be able to see them in our next meetings and can count on their support. Thank you! The second announcement is related to the organization of our annual conference. This year has been anything but easy and predictable. Three months ago, we mentioned that we were evaluating the possibility of hosting an online meeting next March and we have decided to go through with this plan. The safety of all our members is important to us and so we decided to go digital. The format of the event will differ from a normal LACQUA conference and we are working on offering a shorter program, focused on fewer topics. We will take full advantage of the available technology to deliver high-quality presentations and try to invite speakers that would normally not be able to travel to our conference. We are working on a first draft of the technical program; please consult our webpage for updated information on the event. I hope that you are all well and I look forward to seeing you online next March. — Laurence Massaut, President Latin American and Caribbean Chapter I t has been about five months since the inception of the newAPC Board in mid-June 2020. One of the key objectives of the APC is to enhance connectivity between APCmembers and aquaculture professionals from other parts of the world. The collaboration with the Aquaculture Innovation Centre (AIC), Singapore, in hosting joint thematic webinars has been fruitful, with two interesting webinars focusing on aquaculture health and disease prevention and urban aquaculture held in September and October, respectively. Thanks to the webinar organizing committees from both the APC (Ms. Natchavee Angsuwattananon, Dr. Salin Krishna and Dr. Sagiv Kolkovski) and AIC (Dr. Lee Chee Wee, Mr. Hadrian Lau and Ms. Susila Krishnasamy) for the great job done. Both webinars had registrations to full capacities and feedback received was encouragingly positive and we thank all our panelists for the hard work in making both webinars successful. We were delighted to receive email requests from attendees wanting to be on our email list for future thematic webinars in the series. In addition, some of our distinguished speakers have also been engaged in discussion thereafter on potential collaborations in research or consultancy projects. We hope that more such collaborations or knowledge exchanges among members will grow over time. In the pipeline of activities for the first half of 2021, the APC Board will continue to work with AIC in organizing thematic webinars on aquaculture innovations and technologies for sustainable aquaculture, and possibly technical workshops, in the near future. Based on a members’ feedback survey recently completed in September, 243 replies were received frommembers representing sectors including research, policy and regulation, diagnostics, sales and marketing, and commercial production. Respondents in the areas of research (57 percent) and commercial seafood and live feed production (15 percent) predominated. The APC Board is heartened to note that 60 percent of members are keen to be involved either as speakers or facilitators in APC-organized activities. Adopting an inclusive approach, the APC Board will look into engaging members, including students, in APC activities, wherever possible. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic that is still affecting many countries, the WA2020 conference has been postponed to 14-18 June 2021. However, WAS has planned a lineup of interesting free webinars from 14-16 December 2020. More information about the program can be found onWAS website. We look forward to your support for the upcomingWAS webinars in December 2020 and hope that you will be able to find APC-organized activities worth your while. — Diana Chan, President Asian Pacific Chapter