Monday, March 11, 2013

Event: Aquaculture Europe 2013

Alistair Lane, executive director, EuropeanAquaculture Society, Belgium talks to International Aquafeed’s Alice Neal about Aquaculture Europe 2013.

Aquaculture Europe 2013
August 9-12, 2013
Trondheim, Norway
Can you tell us a bit about the history of Aquaculture Europe?
The Aquaculture Europe conferences started in 1981, with a ‘World aquaculture’ event held in Venice. Since then, it has become an annual event to bring people involved in the development of European aquaculture together.

Each Aquaculture Europe (AE) event has a theme, and although the parallel sessions are linked to the theme, the idea is to keep it a general event, so that all can find their specific area of interest, but at the same time, participate in sessions that are outside their direct activity.

In this way, the AE events remain ‘general’ aquaculture conferences, and we consider this an advantage for delegates involved in research, production, supply or policy, but also those that are looking at aquaculture ‘for the first time’ and wish to get a helicopter view of the latest knowledge and its applications.

What have been the biggest successes of the event in the past?
The early AE events were generally conferences only, sometimes linked to existing trade exhibitions and attracting 3-500 participants.

In 2007, the European Aquaculture Society (EAS) board expressed its desire to increase the size and importance of the event, by incorporating our own trade show, and various special sessions (such as the Farmer’s Day or Industry Forum), as well as other special workshops. AE is also a platform for project consortia or association meetings, and this has contributed to the increase in attendance.

AE2010 in Porto attracted 1072 participants from 55 countries and AE2011 in Rhodes, 1029 from 52. This is the size of event that we were aiming at and in general, AE events are held in October so that as people plan their events, EAS becomes their annual October event.

What new for Aquaculture Europe 2013?
Nothing new in the format, in that the events since 1995 have been held in Trondheim, Norway every two years and since 2009, every four years, to coincide with the Aqua Nor exhibition, and we have had an excellent relationship with the Nor Fishing Foundation and with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where the conference is held.

What is new, however, is the theme of AE2013. The theme - Making Sense of Science - will focus on knowledge management to support technological development and innovation. Making sense of science implies setting priorities for knowledge generation; using the best people and infrastructure to create the knowledge and using the most suitable communication channels to ensure maximum impact of the results for all the different players in the value chain as well as for the end users. It’s possibly the first time that we have really focused on what we now term ‘knowledge management’, but this said, the dissemination, communication and transfer of knowledge is was EAS is all about, and the theme of this year’s event actually underlines the whole research ‘raison d’être’.
Alistair Lane (left) meets King Harald V of Norway at the 2009 Aqua Nor event, held just after AE2009 in Trondheim

Who is the event aimed at?
Like all EAS AE events, AE2013 is targeted at all, from whatever branch or sector, that are interested in the latest research findings and their application across a broad range of topics, species and activities.

What can exhibitors expect to see and do?
As AE2013 will be held just prior to Aqua Nor 2013, we will not be organising our own trade event. But all AE2013 delegates have free admission to Aqua Nor and on its opening day (August 13, 2013), we are organising an Industry Forum, that will be held on the Aqua Nor site at the Trondheim Spektrum. This will take the format of short presentations and panel discussions on several hot topics of interest to the cold water marine sector.

What are the most important issues in aquaculture at the moment?
There are many – as usual! We have issues on the use of non-ruminant co-products in aquaculture feeds, better management of the growth cycle of aquaculture species, non-chemical treatment of parasites and a whole host of others.

On the political front, we are awaiting the European Commission strategic guidelines for aquaculture that could help Member States to simplify administrative procedures especially for licencing; secure allocation of water and space in coordinated spatial planning and promote business diversification to provide additional sources of income and sustainable growth.

How does Aquaculture Europe reflect these issues?
Aquaculture Europe 2013 is all about communicating knowledge. We have increasing knowledge on any and all of the above issues, but we still need to be better at identifying the users of that knowledge and how our messages should be communicated to them.

Anything else you’d like to tell International Aquafeed readers about?
The deadline for abstract submission is approaching fast, so readers that are interested in presenting should look at the EAS web site and get their abstracts in as quickly as possible. We are planning four nutrition sessions – on requirements; ingredients; live feeds and health – but there are also other sessions that could be of interest to International Aquafeed readers.

It would be a pleasure to have you with us in Trondheim this summer.





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