World Aquaculture Magazine - June 2020

14 JUNE 2020 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S.ORG I N M E M O R I A M A n internationally renowned Sri Lankan fisheries and aquauclture scientist, Professor Sena S. De Silva, peacefully passed away in Melbourne, Australia, on 6 May 2020. He was respected and admired by the global fisheries and aquaculture community for his 40 years of enduring commitment and profound dedication to the science he loved. Sena was born in 1946 in Ambalangoda, Sri Lanka, the eldest of seven boys. His family lived in Pinnaduwa, a tiny village surrounded by paddy fields. Sena’s father, L.C. De Silva, was a businessman and a landowner. He was also a politician, a socialist, a member of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party. When Sena turned five, he was enrolled in one of the two prestigious Buddhist boys schools in Colombo, Nalanda Vidyalaya. Sena’s childhood was a happy one. That is where his warm personality, his values and ideals, with a strong sense of duty and concern for the less fortunate, blossomed. Sena had an excellent academic career at Nalanda and at the age of 18 entered the Faculty of Science of the University of Ceylon and pursued an Honours degree in Zoology. He received a B.Sc. (Honours) degree in Zoology in 1968 from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. After serving few years as an Assistant Lecturer in Zoology at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, Sena moved to United Kingdom and obtained his Ph.D. in Fisheries Biology from the University of Stirling, Scotland, in 1973. Following his return to Sri Lanka in 1973, he continued his teaching and research at the University of Kelaniya until he was appointed Professor of Zoology at the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, in 1978. Sena, the youngest academic to hold such a position in Sri Lanka, continued his career at the University of Ruhuna until 1988. He moved to National University of Singapore in 1989, where he served as a Senior Visiting Fellow Sena S. De Silva (1946-2020)