Following Mardi Gras

Following Mardi Gras

Aquaculture without Frontiers is hitting the road next month and will be centering its activities on New Orleans and the American Aquaculture event which follows the famous Mardi Gras.

“I doubt if we will be parading in all the fancy costumes as we have some serious activities like the AwF Board Meeting, a General Meeting for AwF and an important session at the Conference but NOLA is full of history and is the home of special music and well known for its seafood and hospitality and is very close to our base in Baton Rouge”, said Executive Director, Roy Palmer.

The Session developed by AwF “Development, Welfare and Poverty Alleviation” will see speakers from Kenya, Ghana, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Mexico, Netherlands and Australia covering a range of activities within the subject area.

‘Aquaculture without Frontiers’ Launched in Australia

Aquaculture, the farming of aquatic organisms, including fish, molluscs, crustaceans and aquatic plants, is rapidly becoming one of the biggest contributors to sustainable food production for the world.

In many developing countries, aquaculture at subsistence level is already an important source of both income and nutrition for millions of families and, when aggregated, is a key contributor to the economic growth of many nations.

Modern aquaculture can be undertaken with minimal impacts to sensitive coastal environments and can contribute to the welfare of our ocean resources, rather than depleting them, by providing a sustainable alternative to harvesting wild fish and other aquatic creatures. Additionally aquaculture is the major means to fish stock enhancement globally.

Kuching MoU

Aquaculture without Frontiers is very excited to announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which took place on 10 December in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia and gives some indication of the importance of our organisation into the future.

The signing of the MoU with partners STEM States Incorporated and the Association of International Seafood Professionals (AISP) was signed in the offices of Tan Sri William Mawan Ikom, Minister of Social Development Sarawak (KPS) which indicates the importance of the proposed activities relating to the future of social development and education in Malaysia, with a particular emphasis on SCORE and aligning Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Aquaculture to Malaysia’s future human resource needs.

AwF Woman of the Month – December 2014

Jenny Cobcroft learning to feed snakehead

Following a unanimous decision by the AwF Women’s Network Committee we are very pleased to announce that our inaugural ‘Woman of the Month’ for December 2014 is Dr. Jennifer Cobcroft BSc PhD, Research Fellow at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania.

Jenny surpasses all of the criteria relating to AwF processes of recognition of outstanding achievements which advance our goals and values so we have much pleasure in promoting Jenny as an outstanding individual and role model for aquaculture/seafood women for the time and dedication she has given for members of the community.

Jenny has also recently been recognised by her peers in the aquaculture sphere by being voted onto the World Aquaculture Society – Asian Pacific Chapter Board.

Celebrating International Volunteers Day (5 December)

Aquaculture without Frontiers (AwF) relies heavily on people who are prepared to devote time and effort to the cause – without this most generous gift we could never have achieved anything like what we have over the years. We salute all volunteers but we are especially keen to support our own people on this special day, International Volunteers Day (IVD).

On this day our major announcement is that we have been accepted as members of Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance (VEGA) which is an umbrella organisation consisting of economic development organizations that integrate highly skilled volunteers into programs mainly funded through the USAID program. VEGA is involved in many and varied projects that involve one or more of the member organizations and as we engage we believe this will create many opportunities. We aim to collaborate with all of the members and to be their ‘aquaculture’ experts.

The following actions have been undertaken, or are planned, as a result of the energetic suggestions from our volunteers re IVD. We: 

Women’s Network – Hitting the Road

GAF5 Lucknow Nov 2014

Our Women’s Network was unofficially launched when 5 members from the AwF Women’s Network presented at the 5th Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries (GAF5) symposium in Lucknow, India as part of the 10th Indian Fisheries and Aquaculture Forum (10IFAF) of the Asian Fisheries Society Indian Branch.

Of those 5 members one is AwF (Australia) Ltd Board member, Meryl Williams and the balance represent fifty per cent of the Women’s Network Committee namely Arlene Nietes Satapornvanit, Chloe English, Marie Christine Monfort and Bibha Kumari, who was awarded Prize winner Best Paper, Highly commended (Congratulations Bibha!). Meryl (special guest and coordinator of GAF) gave a plenary talk and ran a workshop, Gender Aquaculture and Fisheries Writing Workshop.

US Aid Grant Announced

The University of Arizona has been awarded a $1,729,000 grant from USAID to serve as the implementing partner for “Developing a Sustainable Seafood Industry Infrastructure in Burma (Myanmar)”. The project, starting in October 2014 and running for three years, is a partnership between University of Arizona and Yangon and Pathein Universities in Myanmar and the Myanmar Fisheries Federation (MFF). The MFF represents most of the private sector fishing, aquaculture and seafood processing enterprises in Burma, which is one of the top ten seafood producers and consumers in the world with extensive marine fisheries and aquaculture industries. The Burmese people consume, per capita, 4 times the amount of seafood as Americans. International partners on the project will include DuPont, RippleFish, Tiran Group, Handy Seafood, Auburn University, Asian Institute of Technology, Relief International, and Aquaculture without Frontiers (AwF).

Young Tasmanians Lead by Example

HVTTC Cert II Aqua students, Alister Smythe, Steve Harrison (Trainer), Emm Kelly, Jamie Bennett

The evening of the 22 October will go down in Aquaculture without Frontier’s (AwF) history as the starting point of its Australian organisation thanks heavily to the students and staff at the Huon Valley Trade Training Centre (HVTTC), especially Steve Harrison.

A full complement of fifty people attended the event and were treated to a fabulous range of Tasmanian seafood and beverages all donated generously by an array of companies – the who’s who of Tasmanian food and drink. We thank them all most sincerely.

Andrew Cowmeadow HVTTC Cert III Commercial Cookery student preparing Abtas abalone

From the outset this was going to be all about the students and they left no stone unturned in their efforts to ensure that the catering was top notch (under the watchful eye of first class local chefs) and that the main event of making people aware of AwF and its activities ran like clockwork.

EAS honours eminent aquaculture figure Michael New

Michael New, OBE, (right) was surprised and delighted to receive the Honorary Life Membership of the European Aquaculture Society from incoming EAS President Sachi Kaushik

At the opening session of its Aquaculture Europe 2014 event in Donostia-San Sebastián in Spain on October 14^th, the European Aquaculture Society (EAS[1]) gave its Honorary Life Membership Award to Michael New, for his long-term contribution to the development of aquaculture and the activities of the Society. AE2014 was attended by almost 1500 participants from 71 countries, making it the biggest Aquaculture Europe event to date.

Honorary Life Membership is the highest EAS award and is given to those persons that have had a marked impact on the development of European aquaculture.  Since 1981, EAS has bestowed this award on only 10 persons, including such names as Eric Edwards, Bernard Chevassus-au-Louis, Peter Hjul, Colin Nash and more recently, Courtney Hough, Pascal Divanach and Patrick Sorgeloos.

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[1] http://www.easonline.org/

AwF New Secretariat – Volunteers

Aquaculture without Frontiers is pleased to announce the appointment of Paul Liew as Secretariat for the Volunteers Network.

Roy Palmer, President and Executive Director, AwF, said “We are absolutely delighted that Paul has offered his considerable skills to service our Volunteer Network. AwF has entered a new era and it is important, if we are to achieve the aims set out in our Strategic Plan, that we broaden our connections and horizons. We have a compelling story and a massive job ahead of us in achieving our goals so we must expand our base and create opportunities for people to engage. The work of our volunteers is paramount to the organisation so it is essential that we have good admin support.”