Aquaculture first at animal conference

Date published: 06 September 2016

The Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) have sponsored the first aquaculture session to ever appear on the programme of the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP) conference in its 67-year history. The 4-day conference took place in Belfast at the end of August and had over 1500 delegates and brought nearly £3M to the local economy.

Dr Matt Service of AFBI chaired the aquaculture session, which included six invited papers from researchers in UK and Portugal who are investigating issues affecting the aquaculture industry.

The session opened with a presentation on agricultural and urban nutrient loads to coastal systems. Further papers followed on sustainable cultivation of blue mussels and native oyster stocks and ecosystem management of shellfish aquaculture. Dr Dennis Ensing of AFBI also gave an entertaining paper on the interbreeding between escaped farmed and wild salmon.

The session included a visit to the AFBI Research Vessel, “Corystes” with around 20 delegates visiting the ship, at a berth outside the SSE Arena in the Lagan basin. AFBI researchers demonstrated research techniques employed by the Institute in support of government and the wider fishing industry.

Dr Service said “It’s a good thing to see aquaculture taking its rightful place at a conference like this for the first, but hopefully not last time, the important interaction between land use in coastal catchments and coastal processes is being increasingly recognised as key to providing the water quality required for sustainable aquaculture. Farmed production now dominates aquatic sources of protein, a large part of the human diet in many countries. We can hopefully build on this successful session to bigger things in the following years to meet the challenges to European Aquaculture.”