Here I am already drafting my final column as President of the Society and handing over responsibilities to my successor after 11½ months in the job. I’m sure many Past Presidents will share my perception that time just flies by and there is simply not enough time to have a significant impact across the spectrum of Society activities. The World Aquaculture Society is a well-established organization and there is a vast reservoir of experience and institutional memory in its staff, on the Board, among the Past Presidents and Fellows and within the membership at large. This certainly gives the Society a secure and stable basis from which to plan activities years into the future. Important to this is the responsible fiscal management that has secured a very sound financial footing for the Society. At this juncture I express my gratitude to our outgoing treasurer, Bill Daniels, for his six years of service in this role and he certainly hands over the books to our new treasurer, Wendy Sealey, with the Society in healthy financial standing.

Traditions within the society and the long-term planning horizon make it challenging to institute significant changes at any point in time and in particular I’m thinking of measures we could take to expand our membership, particularly in underrepresented countries. I have likened the Society to one of those large ocean-going cargo vessels where a tweak to the wheel today might cause the ship to finally change direction ten miles down the track. Changes made today might impact two or three years down the line if we’re looking at a metric such as Society membership. I did believe that we could institute some changes to address the membership expansion goal, which I maintain should be a priority for the Society and an achievable one. Although we have instituted some measures that will attract new members, we have not done as much as I had hoped and I urge the incoming Board to maintain and increase focus on expanding membership, particularly through better understanding of the value proposition of Society membership to those in aquaculture who are not currently members or do not retain their membership and through improved communication, including better use of the media preferred by the younger generation of aquaculturists. We cannot afford to deposit this issue in the ‘too hard’ basket.

There have been, however, a number of good positive developments and we have made some significant progress over the past couple of years. We have instituted some changes to the functions, rules and guidelines of the Society that should help in the Board in particular to function more efficiently.

The Chapter secretariats are being effectively implemented and we now have Nash and Genie in the LACC and APC chapter offices, respectively. Both have been able to interact directly with the Home Office and the Board. They are highly competent and their involvement is enabling greater focus on regional activities, including local workshops and more frequent communication with chapter members.

We are moving forward with the JWAS reinvigoration plan and hope to announce our new Executive Editor by the end of the meeting in Jeju. The successful candidate in this new expanded role will further develop the business plan for the Journal and drive its reinvigoration. This won’t happen overnight but I expect members to see some real improvements to the journal by early next year. Meanwhile the magazine continues to receive positive reviews under its current editorial team and we are now considering expanding options for production of local language issues or articles.

Chapter Secretariats and the journal reinvigoration are two of the most important initiatives in the recent history of the Society and not without their risks and I look forward to monitoring their progress and viewing their impact on the Society going forward.

We are constantly improving our student activities at the WAS conferences and we will shortly be initiating a new student travel award in honor of our recently departed colleague, Dr. Nandeesha.

An exciting new development agreed to at our most recent Board meeting is to replace the moribund WAS working groups with a new concept of WAS Communities of Practice (CoPs). These are essentially small groups of like-minded people involved with a common issue in aquaculture who currently have no structure or mechanism for networking. WAS will offer its CoPs a range of networking services including listserves to enable communication, document repositories, meeting organization, opportunities to publicize their activities, etc. A successful CoP might gather pace and grow its membership to the point that it might form its own association, hopefully with an on-going affiliation with WAS. CoPs are designed to be much more flexible and adaptive than the now moribund WAS working groups. In principal, any group can apply to form a CoP although it requires a committed coordinator who can work with a WAS representative to set up the services that will facilitate the operationalization of the group. As an example we hope that the first CoP formed will be an industry-focused group engaged in the development of Seriola aquaculture. My thanks goes to the Industry Relations committee for developing this initiative. While CoPs are being established primarily for industry members, there is no reason why CoPs cannot form around academic or research issues and we welcome ideas and suggestions for the formation of CoPs from our members.

I am proud to have served the Society in this role and, as I step down, I’m happy that the Society is in good health, finances are strong and the initiatives implemented over the last year will see the Society move forward. We have slightly expanded our membership over the past year and I expect further steady if unspectacular growth.

I would like to add my sincere thanks to the other three outgoing Board members, Michael Schwarz, the immediate Past President and excellent mentor in the role, and Sandy Shumway and Luis Sampaio, retiring directors who have made valuable contributions to the Society during their terms on the Board.

I wish the incoming President Rebecca Lochmann well in the role, although her tenure will be unfortunately short. I urge the new Board and President to maintain a focus on the goal of expanding the reach of the society by focusing on issues of communication and understanding the value proposition to non-members because I continue to believe that they are fundamental to finally driving some growth of the Society’s membership.

— Graham Mair, President