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’.
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| 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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