6 SEPTEMBER 2016 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WAS.ORG U.S. Aquaculture Society At this time of year, summer in the northern hemisphere, people in aquaculture tend to be extremely busy. It is also the time for planning for the winter and the annual meeting of the U.S. Aquaculture Society. Aquaculture America 2017 will be in San Antonio, Texas from 19-22 February 2017. The theme for the conference is “Forging New Frontiers” and it seeks to keep US aquaculture development on a bright trail for the future. The meeting will also have a great aquaculture trade show with as many as 200 exhibitors, so conference participants can inspect the latest in products and services for the aquaculture industry. As usual, the meeting will have interesting educational sessions, and San Antonio is a fun place for a meeting, especially with the Riverwalk. This year the meeting is being planned under the excellent leadership of Mike Denson, Immediate Past President of USAS, Kathleen Hartman, our previous Past President and Dave Straus, who serves as a member of the current Board of Directors. The special sessions are filling up and many of the regular technical programs will be on the agenda. It has been wonderful expanding the partnership between USAS and the National Aquaculture Association (NAA) and Paul Zajicek, the new President of NAA, will be working with his team to fill in the expanded producer programs. Abstracts or “placeholder” abstracts were due August 25. Placeholder abstracts allow those who grab a spot to have up to December 31 to submit their final abstract. If you missed this, keep the “placeholder” concept in mind for future meetings if you are in the midst of research and don’t know if it will all work out in time. Students should be made aware of the many opportunities for awards for the San Antonio meeting because there are a good number available. Partial support for these awards comes from companies that are involved in aquaculture and want to see student research, realizing that innovation can come in many ways and that students are potential employees. Someone has to win these awards so university faculty should urge their students to compete. All the specific information is listed on the USAS website at usaquaculture. org/student-awards. Angela Caporelli, the new Vice President of USAS, will be coordinating the awards and the deadline for submission is in December, so think seriously about how you might present your work. Speaking of students, there is a new Student Subgroup at Auburn University. They are still in the early formative stages and at this writing have not yet elected their officers. They continue to work to clean up their by-laws, but kudos to those folks for going in the right direction. If there are any other schools that would like to form a student subgroup and start to understand the potential of USAS, please reach out to the Officers or Board for some help. Bauer Duke, the chair of the Student Subunit Committee, has been working with Board member Eric Peatman, President-Elect Dave Cline, and Carter Ullman, the Student Apprentice to the Student Activities Committee who is at Auburn, to make this happen. To help get the word out about USAS events, Bill Walton, Dennis MacIntosh and Vice President Dave Cline have been expanding the use of social media for USAS. An Instagram account (instagram.com/usaquasoc) and a Twitter account (twitter.com/usaquasoc) have been established. And don’t forget that there is still the USAS Facebook page and most of the newest and most important news from USAS is posted there. It allows for longer bits of text so it’s a good place to keep up to date. We’d really like you to share what is going on with your experiments, field work or lab work. It is very possible that we will have some judging for best submissions or photos with prizes going out too. So please check these things out and send some posts out to the other members of USAS. As part of the member services concept that was begun by our Past President Mike Denson, Board Member Allen Pattillo from Iowa State has expanded the grant he received from the North Central Regional Aquaculture Center and had USAS and NAA partner to deliver a large group of educational videos on various aspects of aquaculture. There have already been four webinars presented and these are posted on the USAS website for viewing at your convenience. Allen will be coordinating about one webinar per month until next February. Announcements about these will likely be posted on the USAS Facebook page and may go out as an email blast from the WAS Home Office where Carol Mendoza and Judy Andrasko keep the lines of communication humming. For the first time this year, USAS decided to expand its reach and participate as a co-sponsor of a regional meeting, the International Conference on Recirculating Aquaculture in Roanoke, Virginia. This series of conferences have been going on for a while and seem to be one of the main venues for new information about aquaculture engineering. USAS sponsored two students, one from Hawaii and one from New Hampshire to work with Board Member Kwamena Quagrainie to set up a booth at the conference trade show and hand out information about USAS. The Officers and Board of USAS would like to continue to help support some state and regional meetings with sponsorship. If you are aware of meetings being planned, contact one of the officers or send a note explaining the event and it will go to the board for a vote. All should know that under the watchful eye of Gulni (Rose) Ozbay, our Secretary/Treasurer, our finances and investments are doing well and allowing us to do these kinds of sponsorships. As a final note, I want to mention a phrase attributed to Groucho Marx. He essentially said when resigning from the Friars Club that he didn’t want to belong to a club that would have a person like him as a member. As I have been working with the Board and Officers, off and on, for several years, I see that the vast majority of members of USAS think that membership is something to put on a resume and to get a journal. Being part of an organization of learned people is such an opportunity for increasing knowledge, collaborating with dedicated like-minded people, and helping aquaculture grow and succeed in the US and internationally. So, when the USAS leadership tries to reach out on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and through emails with new opportunities or requests for information about what you are doing where you are, please don’t think like Groucho. YOU are the United States Aquaculture Society. USAS is a sum of its parts. Be the part that participates. — Gef Flimlin, President CHAPTER REPORTS
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