World Aquaculture Magazine - March 2021

4 MARCH 2021 • WORLD AQUACULTURE • WWW.WA S .ORG C H A P T E R R E P O R T S I am in my second and last year as President of the Latin American and Caribbean Chapter and hope this new year will give us the opportunity to recuperate some type of interaction as we were accustomed to having. Soon we will have our annual conference, 100 percent online. LACQUA20 will take place on 23-25 March 2021 and will feature talks by selected speakers on subjects relevant to our region: 1) economy and markets, 2) shrimp, 3) Macrobrachium, 4) tilapia, 5) native and marine fishes, 6) health management and 7) culture systems. The event will also include a new session format for industry, where companies and media will have a dedicated space to present results from their latest research, products and services. I hope you will be able to join us. Our region will also host the WAS global conference this year. Indeed, World Aquaculture 2021 is planned to take place in Mérida, Mexico, from 15 to 19 November 2021. The call for abstracts will stay open until 1 May 2021 and I invite all of you to submit your work. This is the perfect opportunity for the Latin American region to showcase our research, training programs and expertise with the culture of native species and development of aquaculture systems adapted to our reality. I am sure we will also all be happy to meet again and regain those conversations and exchanges of ideas after so many months apart. Visit our webpage ( www.was.org) and click on the conference logo for more information, registration, sponsorship opportunities or abstract submission. As a final comment on conferences, we wanted to let you know that we are already evaluating different locations for LACQUA 2022 and 2023. Ecuador, Chile and Peru have approached us and we are open to review any strong host city supported by our members. Feel free to send detailed information to Carolina Amézquita at Carolina@was.org. Before leaving you, I would like to inform you of the results of our election. The receipt of ballots was extended until the first week of February and, after counting the votes, we can now announce two new Board Members: Laura Patricia Silva is our new Secretary and Sergio Andres Piedrahita Wood is the newDirector. They will take office during our virtual Board meeting in March and will serve on the Board for two years, until the 2022 LACQUA convention. Laura has developed her aquaculture career in the academic sector in Mexico and in the research sector in Mexico and Brazil. Sergio brings a vast experience in the aquaculture sector, mostly hands-on aquaculture farming in large-scale industrial operations in Mexico, Honduras, Colombia and Haiti. We are sure that Laura and Sergio will bring new vision and energy to the Board, allowing us to expand our reach and continue to promote sustainable development of aquaculture in the Latin American and Caribbean region. I hope you are all well. — Laurence Massaut, President Latin American and Caribbean Chapter T he impact of the pandemic has taken quite a toll on aquaculture and fisheries in general but it has also created many opportunities for many farmers to step out of their comfort zone and delve into innovations and technology adoption that could help them cope with the situation. The Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, sensor technology, big data, cloud computing, 5G networks and automation using robot technologies are some of the technologies that have proven effective as farm production management tools. The APC will work towards inviting commercial farmers or technology developers of some of these emerging technologies to share their thoughts about their application in smart or precision aquaculture in one of our upcoming webinars. Apart from the recent thematic webinars that focused on technologies and innovations in aquaculture, the APC Board recently held a scientific writing webinar for students in January 2021, led by Dr. Menaga, who is our Student Director, as part of our inclusive approach in reaching out to APCmembers. The webinar was well received by students and APCmembers in the region and it covered tips on good writing skills as well as analytical tools for data interpretation and presentation. We also had the pleasure of the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, jointly hosting the student-centric webinar together with the APC and the Aquaculture Innovation Centre, Singapore. The APC Board will continue to reach out to APCmembers, especially students, and engage them in our upcoming activities whenever possible. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic that is still affecting many countries, the WA2020 conference has been postponed to December 2021. The conference venue will still remain the same. Hopefully, vaccination programs against Covid-19 in various countries will enable greater air travel by then. More information about the program can be found on the WAS website. On another note, our WAS-APC conference, originally scheduled for September 2021, has been cancelled for a similar reason. We look forward to your continuing support for the upcoming thematic webinars in the next fewmonths. Take care. — Diana Chan, President Asian Pacific Chapter The impact of the pandemic has taken quite a toll on aquaculture and fisheries in general but it has also created many opportunities for many farmers to step out of their comfort zone and delve into innovations and technology adoption that could help them cope with the situation.