World Aquaculture Magazine - March 2021

20 MARCH 2021 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S .ORG C H A P T E R R E P O R T S committee will soon begin the process of developing an election roadmap, including the identification of a slate of candidates to stand for the election, hopefully in July this year. I also wish to take this opportunity to congratulate two fellow Board members, Dr. Alexander Kefi (Southern Africa), who has recently been promoted to Director of Fisheries in Zambia, and Dr. Harrison Karisa, who has just joined the World Bank fisheries program and will be based in the USA. Congratulations for stepping up the ladder! It means a lot to the African Chapter. From our WAS headquarters, I am sure you will hear from the WAS President’s Column of the recent changes to the WAS Board as announced at the recently held Annual Board and Business Meeting 2021. I wish to thank all outgoing Board members we have worked with for all their support. Special thanks go to Drs. Jimmy Avery and Maria Portella, past presidents who have been actively involved in the Chapter’s early stages of operation. I also wish to welcome new Board members who have just assumed duty, including the incoming WAS President, Dr. Antonio Garza de Yta. We hope to work closely with them in delivering according to our mandates and efforts to have the “WAS we all want.” Lastly, let me once again wish all of you and your families safety and good health as we keep weathering through the COVID storm. My prayer is that 2021 will be a much better year for us all. — Sherif Sadek, President Afr ica Chap t er , continued from page 7 calling on their collective experiences and wisdom as I take on my new role. I think we can all agree that 2020 was a year unlike any other in recent memory. Regardless of last year, I choose to remain optimistic that we can do better, the future can be brighter, we can become a more unified country and we can do more to provide safe and healthy seafood to help feed the world. Aquaculture has a positive role to play in our nation’s economy and we can work to advance it even more. Although other stories in the mainstreammedia have eclipsed news about US aquaculture and the hardships many of you are facing, there have been some amazing efforts to quantify the impacts that COVID-19 has had on the industry and to support the industry through these difficult times. I cannot mention all of the specific efforts made or the individual champions that have stepped forward to make a difference, and I do apologize in advance for that, but here are just a few of the highlights that make me proud to be involved in THIS industry. The first example is the quarterly survey fromVirginia Tech Seafood Agricultural Research and Extension Center and The Ohio State University Extension to capture and quantify the effects of the pandemic on aquaculture, aquaponics and allied industries. As the saying goes, ‘knowledge is power,’ and this effort has provided an honest look at the scale of the pandemic’s effect on our growers. Moving forward, information gleaned from these surveys can help justify continued support of the domestic aquaculture industry and find strengths and weaknesses within the industry. Equipped with this knowledge, producer groups, state aquaculture associations and regulators can make better informed decisions on where to go from here. More information about this survey, response and findings can be found here: https://www.arec.vaes.vt.edu/arec/virginia- seafood/research/Impacts_of_COVID19.html. Another example is the NOAA Sea Grant FY2020 COVID-19 Related Rapid Response ( https://seagrant.noaa.gov/Portals/0/ Documents/SeaGrant-Natl-COVID-Summary-Oct20-2020.pdf). Sea Grant recognized the impact that the pandemic was having on the seafood industry and responded quickly. Individual Sea Grant programs responded with a range of creative solutions to help locally. InWisconsin, funds were used to support an outreach specialist to assist with local seafood marketing. In Oregon and North Carolina, Sea Grant used their funds to support direct seafood sales. In Delaware and NewHampshire, a portion of the funds were used to make direct purchases of shellfish that local growers were unable to sell due to depressed markets and that were then planted out for use in restoration efforts. A similar program has been implemented by The Nature Conservancy on a larger scale, purchasing and then planting ~5,000,000 oysters. I realize that none of these efforts — the impact survey, Sea Grant’s rapid response grants, or the Nature Conservancy’s purchase of un-sellable oysters for restoration—can fill the holes in an individual farm’s bottom line or make folks whole from their business or personal losses resulting from the pandemic, but to me, they illustrate the wonderful community we are a part of, and showcase how resilient and adaptable the US aquaculture industry really is because of all of you. There have been so many creative ‘solutions’ to the problem of declining restaurant sales. Just a few of the approaches that I have heard about are growers switching to direct-to-consumer online sales, the establishment of community- supported fisheries and identification of newmarkets (e.g., overseas, value-added, etc.). Your creativity never ceases to amaze me. As I step into the role of USAS President, I want to use my time to continue to build on the solid foundation that has been created over the years by past USAS Presidents and Boards. I am particularly passionate about engaging with our student members. They are the future of our Society and without their input, involvement and leadership, we all lose. We added two new student subunits in 2020 and hope to add at least one more in 2021. Moving forward, please feel free to reach out with comments, suggestions and/or concerns. The best way to reach me is via e-mail at dmcintosh@desu.edu . I look forward to seeing you all at Aquaculture America 2021 in San Antonio, Texas, later this year! —Dennis McIntosh, President U. S. Aquacult ure Soci e t y, continued from page 10