Category Archives: Updates

Volunteers Update

We have 15 new volunteers who have registered since 18 May 2014 and we continue to build our list. Thank you to those who have made this commitment.

Our Volunteer Coordinators, Cormac and Ignacio, will be in touch with you very soon. In the meantime, you will be pleased to know that we are expecting a large number of opportunities for volunteers to contribute in the very near future.

Kevin Fitzsimmons, previous AwF President, is currently in Bangladesh developing volunteer projects and in the following weeks he will be Myanmar and Nepal. 

Aquaculture & Forests

In a recent study published in Nature Communications it has been suggested that deforestation is reducing the amount of leaf litter falling into rivers and lakes, resulting in less food being available to fish.

Lead author Andrew Tanentzap from the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences said “We found fish that had almost 70% of their biomass made from carbon that came from trees and leaves instead of aquatic food chain sources.  While plankton raised on algal carbon is more nutritious, organic carbon from trees washed into lakes is a hugely important food source for freshwater fish, bolstering their diet to ensure good size and strength.”

Dr Tanentzap observed: “Where you have more dissolved forest matter you have more bacteria, more bacteria equals more zooplankton.  Areas with the most zooplankton had the largest, fattest fish.”

Creating & Nurturing AwF for Growth

Aquaculture without Frontiers is pleased to announce its program for World Aquaculture Adelaide 2014 (WAA14) which will be taking place at the new Adelaide Convention Centre between 7 & 11 June 2014.

A Silent Auction will be held during the period of the WAA14 Trade Show and that will be our main focus for promotion and fund raising during the event. AwF volunteers will be encouraging people and companies to bid on a range of products, services and vouchers which will be detailed just prior to the event.

Arid Land Aquaculture-Coahuila

The session, Development, Welfare and Poverty Alleviation (AwF), has been sponsored by World Aquaculture Society (WAS) Premier Sponsor, Tyson Foods Inc., one of the world’s largest food suppliers as well as a leader in hunger and disaster relief. It will be held on Wednesday 11 June from 11.10am in Room 6 and will conclude with a meeting session before the ‘Goodbye Adelaide’ event at 5.30pm.

Updating AwF to meet the challenges of the new world “International Aquafeed” May-June 2014

Our regular column in International Aquafeed magazine’s May-June 2014 issue explains what AwF is doing about updating to meet the new challenges of our world, including making a few changes to our website. We would welcome any comments or suggestions to value-add to what we have done. Updating to meet the challenges of the new world

Who will help AwF establish the next ALC?

Become involved!

If you believe that involvement in AwF’s Corporate Social Responsibility program would be beneficial to our organizations, please complete the CSR Registration form and we will contact you to discuss possibilities.

Thank you

Connections between Hunger, Poverty & Nutrition

Hunger and poverty are words we often hear, but for most of us, we have little — if any — personal experience of either here in Australia. Yet for a large proportion of the world, it is part of the daily struggle for life, and an estimated 1 billion people still go to bed hungry each day[1].

So that there can be greater understanding of the very direct connections between hunger, poverty and nutrition, and the role aquaculture can play in alleviating these issues, two specific sessions are being held at the World Aquaculture Adelaide 2014 Conference, which will take place at the Adelaide Convention Centre in Adelaide, South Australia, from 7 to 11 June 2014.

Journalist, author and keynote speaker at the conference, Martin Bowerman, will lead a strong group of local and international speakers at the event, which is expected to attract around 3000 delegates from across the globe.  Mr Bowerman is the author of the recently published ‘Lean Forever’ book, which gives a very personal account of his success in staying lean and healthy, added to his wealth of knowledge on seafood and health issues.

A decade of volunteering service for the poor in developing countries

Thanks to WAS (especially Editor-in-Chief John Hargreaves) we re-publish this article from World Aquaculture magazine Vol 45, Nr 1 March 2014.

The article was written by our Patron and Founder, Michael New OBE, and gives a wonderful description of the first ten years of our Charity. Everyone who has been involved has been mentioned and all should be very proud of what was achieved. A hard act to follow and congratulations to one and all.

Global perspectives on sustainable food security and nutrition for fisheries and aquaculture

Excellent presentation given at North Atlantic Seafood Forum in Bergen by Gro-Ingunn Hemre (FSN Presentation), National Institute of Nutrition and Seafood Research (NIFES) based on the United Nations Committee on World Food Security and their High Level Panel of Experts.

The full report, ‘The Role of Sustainable Fisheries & Aquaculture for Food Security and Nutrition’ will be released in Spain during April 2014.

One of the bold statements made is that ’Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.’

AwF Session at American Aquaculture, Seattle – 12 February 2014

Gleyn Bledsoe, Joseph R Sullivan & others Seattle AwF 2014

Co-Chairs Antonio Garza d’Yta and Roy Palmer welcomed everyone to the session and opened with Gleyn Bledsoe presenting “Aquaculture as a Successful and Sustainable Instrument for Affecting Economic Recovery and Development in a Post War Environment”.

What a harrowing story this was highlighting how women, children and the poor/needy are always the most disadvantaged in these circumstances. Additionally the stories of survival from horrific injuries to re-build a new beginning were quite stirring.

Gleyn ended with some bright hopes for the future in Sri Lanka as you will see in the presentation, and indicated that entrepreneurial individuals would likely succeed in the long run. A similar story unfolded from Joseph R Sullivan in his presentation regarding Liberia, entitled “Bootstrapping Aquaculture from Production to Marketing in Developing Nations”.

Aquaculture 2013: Aquaculture’s role in the ‘First 1000 Days of Life’

Speaking at the ‘Aquaculture 2013: To the Next 40 Years of Sustainable Global Aquaculture’ conference in Gran Canaria, Spain, Shakuntala Thislted, Worldfish, the ‘1000 days’ project and discussed how aquaculture can contribute to giving children the best start in life and help raise a country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The ‘1000 days’ project promotes good nutrition for mother and child during the first 1000 days of life. The period covers the nine months during pregnancy and the first 0-24 months.

The good health and nutrition of a woman during pregnancy and breastfeeding can be linked to eating nutritious fish. Read more …

Shakuntala Thislted is an AwF Ambassador.

Start Friday 13th with some Stirring Stories of Aquaculture

Aquaculture without Frontiers (AwF) Executive Director, Roy Palmer said, “It is fantastic that we have so many excellent contributors for the AwF session at the Asian Pacific Aquaculture Conference and Trade Show scheduled from 10-13 December 2013 in Ho Chi Minh City. The conference emphasizes the need for the whole industry to take a more strategic approach to expansion with the theme ‘Positioning for Profit’ and we will attempt to show how aquaculture plays a role in alleviating poverty and malnutrition, which is a clear profit for society, through our aquaculture activities.”

The Session will be jointly chaired by AwF Founder Michael New, OBE and Roy Palmer and commences at 8:30 am on Friday 13 December as part of the World Aquaculture Societies Asian Pacific Chapter’s exciting conference at the Saigon Exhibition and Conference Centre. There are ten presentations in the session that concludes at the lunch break.