Reflections on Aquaculture Canada 2009

The Aquaculture Association of Canada hosted another great meeting this year, Aquaculture Canada 2009, in Nanaimo, BC in May. This was our 26th annual meeting where we had the opportunity to bring industry, government, researchers, students and others together to focus on issues and developments pertinent to the Canadian aquaculture community. AC09 provided the annual opportunity for our national aquaculture community to get together, discuss opportunities and challenges, network and have fun. It is amazing how strongly connected the people working in all aspects of aquaculture are within Canada. We are like one big family and the camaraderie certainly shows when we come together. The theme of our meeting this year was “Aquaculture: Meeting the Challenges”. Our industry has been meeting challenges, improving and expanding with resilience and innovation since aquaculture was first established in Canada, and they will continue to do so. We had over 290 participants and 3 full days of sessions to cover topics of interest to everyone. The success of this meeting was due to the immense efforts of a wide variety of volunteers. I personally thank everyone that assisted with the organizing and program committees, and registration and various onsite duties. Susan Waddy (long-term, dedicated volunteer) and Catriona Wong from the AAC office work behind the scenes daily to run the association and prepare for the conference. Our conference certainly would not have been such a success without the hard work and expertise of Joanne Burry, our conference coordinator.

Our program chair, Dr. Chris Pearce, with the help of his program committee worked hard to develop sessions addressing topics relevant to the challenges our industry faces today. The need to move our industry forward in an economically and environmentally sustainable fashion was highlighted by our keynote speaker, Dr. Barry Costa-Pierce, who emphasized the dynamic social ecology of aquaculture. Although we all realize the challenges, the importance of engaging public support for our industry cannot be emphasized enough. Our sessions on First Nation issues and the human dimensions of aquaculture addressed specific topics relevant to improving the social license for our industry. A broad range of challenging issues such as those related to sea lice and closed containment were addressed in the session on environmental interactions while other sessions focused on aquatic invasive species and fish welfare. Challenges also bring opportunities and good examples are the opportunities to move our industry forward with genomic tools, ecosystem approaches for management, and certification and traceability solutions. In addition to the contributed papers to be published in the proceedings, the papers on genomic applications to sustainable aquaculture will also be published as an AAC bulletin.

This year the Research Award of Excellence was presented to two scientists, Dr. Shawn Robinson and Dr. Thierry Chopin, who developed a remarkable inter-disciplinary team of researchers and industry partners to establish integrated multi-trophic aquaculture as a commercial reality. Our association realizes the importance of fostering student involvement in aquaculture and we awarded student scholarships worth $1,000 each to Andrea Bozman (Vancouver Island University), David Deslauriers (University of New Brunswick, Saint John) and Nathaniel Feindel (University of New Brunswick, Fredericton), in addition to the travel awards supporting attendance of 13 students.

Debbie Martin-Robichaud

President, Aquaculture Association of Canada