World Aquaculture Magazine - June 2020

WWW.WA S.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • JUNE 2020 15 until 1991, when he joined Deakin University, Warrnambool, Victoria, Australia and served as the Coordinator of the Post- graduate Degree Courses in Aquaculture. He served as a Professor in Aquaculture and Fisheries Management and Director of Research, Deakin University until 2006. In recognition of his research contributions to reservoir fisheries management and aquaculture, Sena was conferred a Doctor of Science degree by the University of Stirling, Scotland, in 1989. He was also conferred an honorary degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka in 1996. From 2006 to 2011, Sena served as the Director General of the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific (NACA), Bangkok, Thailand. During his tenure as Director General of NACA, Sena made many achievements in fisheries and aquauclture development in Asia. He worked closely with the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), effectively interacting with fisheries and aquaculture policymakers worldwide, providing experience and advice through FAO’s Committee on Fisheries (COFI). He was a leading global aquaculture and inland fisheries researcher and played major roles in the development and planning of these sectors at the regional level. Sena played a major role in convening the Global Conference on Aquaculture held in September 2010 in Phuket, Thailand, in association with the FAO and the Department of Fisheries Thailand. He was also instrumental in convening, together with the FAO and the Government of Sri Lanka, the first-ever Fisheries Ministerial Meeting held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in 2011. Sena held over 40 years of experience in academia, both in developing and developed countries. He was the principal supervisor of 22 candidates undertaking their Ph.D. programme at Deakin University from 1992 to 2005. He also acted as an external examiner for Ph.D. dissertations submitted to the universities of Stirling (UK), Dalhousie (Canada), Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand), and many other countries such as India and Thailand. Sena published over 300 articles on fisheries and aquaculture in peer-reviewed international journals, was the senior author of three advanced textbooks, and the editor of nine workshop proceedings. He was Editor-in-Chief of Reviews in Aquaculture, Wiley (from 2008 onwards); the journal with an impact factor of 7.19, which is currently top-ranked among those on fisheries and aquaculture. Sena was a charter member of the Asian Fisheries Society and former Editor-in-Chief of the Asian Fisheries Science journal. He received the Gold Medal Award from the Asian Fisheries Society in 2004 and was conferred the AFS Honorary Life Member Award during the 10th Asian Fisheries &Aquaculture Forum held in South Korea in 2013. In 2005, Sena was conferred the Honorary Life Award by the World Aquaculture Society, recognizing his longstanding and significant contributions to aquaculture. At the time of his demise he was serving as an honorary professor at Deakin University, Australia. Sena’s contributions to the fields of aquaculture and fisheries were formidable. His untimely passing at the age of 73 is a great loss to the global fisheries and aquaculture community. He will be always honored and fondly remembered forever by all his students, colleagues, friends and loved ones. —Rohana Subasinghe, President, WAS-APC Memories from Friends and Colleagues • It was in April 1975, when I met a 30-year-old young Sena De Silva for the first time at the University of Kelaniya (then Vidyalankara University), Sri Lanka. In those days, I had been studying the behavior of some freshwater fish species in aquaria and wanted to know in what sort of environment they had evolved. Sena and I discussed. He understood perfectly and in his imagination saw the region of his youth, far south in the river basin of Gin Ganga, where these and some other species of barbs were common in relatively undisturbed waters. With Sena’s wisdomwe observed the barbs in crystal-clear forest streams, the kind of habitat where those colourful fish must have evolved. It was the beginning of a 45-year friendship, and we did a long series of field studies in Sri Lanka together. Farewell Sena, you were a giant, one with a warm heart. —Koenraad Kortmulder (Netherlands) • I met Prof. Sena S. De Silva in April 2014 for the first time in China when he was awarded a Visiting Professorship for Senior International Scientists by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. From 2014 to 2017, we worked together for more than one month every year in our lab and in the field in China and collaboratively published more than ten high-quality papers on inland fisheries and aquaculture. In my mind, he is the bravest man, greatest scientist, learned professor and warmest friend to me. I learn a lot from him including logical thought, scientific research, academic values, social sciences and simple life in the past six years. Although he has left us, his spirit lives on forever. —Qidong Wang, Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (China) • I met Professor Sena in 1974 when I was a first-year B.Sc. undergraduate in the University of Kelaniya (then Vidyalankara Campus) and he was my zoology teacher. I learned my first lessons of fisheries biology, aquaculture and oceanography from him. In the mid-1980s, he was my Ph.D. supervisor and subsequently became a research collaborator to carry out several research projects, most notably one on reservoir fisheries management and development of culture-based fisheries, under the auspices of Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research. He leaves behind the legacy of an extraordinary teacher who walked the extra mile painstakingly to disseminate the most updated knowledge to his students. He was a great mentor and he used to tell me “Upali, be simple and clear when you write a paper.” I was fortunate to be a co-author on 36 of his papers. I was also a co-editor of two monographs with him on reservoir and culture-based fisheries in Asia, one of which was translated into four regional languages. I am proud to be one of his students and he will be always honored and remembered by all his students, friends and followers. May he attain the supreme bliss of Nibbana. —Upali S. Amarasinghe, University of Kelaniya (Sri Lanka) • Sena was my mentor, my colleague, my friend, my academic father and he is and always will be at the center of many of my most joyful memories. Sena was a man with a razor-sharp intellect and an incredible wealth of knowledge but at the same time a simple person, humble and truly compassionate for the less fortunate. After an incredible career in academia, where Sena contributed to knowledge on fish nutrition, inland fisheries, fish breeding, aquaculture- environment interactions and social and ethical aspects in aquaculture, ( C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 1 6 )