Oceanology International hosted an aquaculture conference at the biannual event in London for the very first time on Wednesday 13th March.Taking place in a room with only around 100 seats for visitors, there was anticipation that there would be visitors from the accompanying exhibition hall. Amazingly there was a wide range of solely aquaculture researchers, industry companies and organisations and public bodies in attendance especially for it. International Aquafeed's Tom Blacker participated
Dr Neil Auchterlonie, Programme Director - Aquaculture and Food Security from Cefas and Professor Peter Davies from the Department of Civil Engineering at Dundee University were co-chairmen for a day of very interesting concepts, projects and more. Please see the full programme online here: http://www.oceanologyinternational.com/en/Sessions/3911/Aquaculture
There were general leanings to the UK aquaculture industry, and salmon therefore dominated the talks but there was a good level of international context brought about too. The call from many speakers for more aquaculture via onshore recirculation systems (RAS) and offshore farms was a fascinating vision of the diversity and thinking needed for aquaculture production to grow. After all, as was highlighted often, the demand from the growing human populace is there and business is waiting to be won.
One talk about the IDREEM project (www.idreem.eu) was a very interesting look ahead to Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture, one you all may wish to look further at.
We look forward to the next time this conference occurs again, in London on 8-10th March 2016!
as aquaculture's only media representative.