The Aquaculture Network Information Center (AquaNIC), established in 1994, was a federal and state partnership between the National Sea Grant College Program, USDA CSREES, and the National Agricultural Library. AquaNIC was coordinated through the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, Auburn University’s Department of Fisheries and Allied Aquacultures, and the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant College Program. Land Grant institutions, Sea Grant Colleges, the USDA Regional Aquaculture Center Program, and others with an expertise in aquaculture provided significant oversight and contributed to the resource base.
The mission of AquaNIC was to be the gateway to the world’s electronic resources in aquaculture. AquaNIC housed or provided links to thousands of state, national, and international aquaculture publications and newsletters. A media section contained photographs, Microsoft PowerPoint slide sets, digital video, and aquaculture software. Several directories were maintained including an international database of people involved in aquaculture and a database of more than six hundred aquaculture Web sites. A news section provided users access to a calendar of events, classified advertisements, and weekly news flashes. One of the most frequently used sections was the job services that contained job announcements and resumes. A beginner’s section provided general information and threaded discussion groups for a variety of commonly cultured aquaculture species and the production systems in which they are grown. An assortment of key links beneficial to outreach educators was included in an educator page and included a list of frequently asked questions and a Java driven aquaculture chat room for educator updates and specialized discussion sessions. AquaNIC hosted web sites for several organizations in the early days of the World Wide Web. These sites included the World Aquaculture Society, The National Shellfisheries Association and the Hybrid Striped Bass Association.
AquaNIC was one of the first, if not the first, virtual aquaculture communities of practice and was widely used. For example, In 2002 AquaNIC was accessed 11.5 million times by 1.2 million visitors from more than 140 countries. AquNIC ceased to exist around 2004 when new eXtension sites were created for freshwater aquaculture and marine aquaculture. The eXension concept for aquaculture lasted only a few years.