The four day show was opened on Tuesday by Dr James Anderson from the University of Florida. In his plenary talk, Dr Anderson spoke about how aquaculture will meet the future demand for seafood but how certain challenges, like disease, must first be addressed.
Kicking off the second day, George Lockwood from the USDA appointed Aquaculture Working Group discussed some of the latest developments with the US organic aquaculture standard.
Sadly, after 17 years of work, the standard has still not been approved and the latest promise of the proposed final rule being ready at the end of 2015 was not met.
Mr Lockwood had hoped to be able to discuss the final rule but instead the session found itself discussing what elements of the standard had been rejected, including feed and water quality issues.
During the fish nutrition sessions, Alexis Bergman from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, presented the results of a collaboration with the University of New Hampshire on the suitability of low cost or no cost feeds for white worms which are used as a live food supplement for larval fish.
The investigation looked at five different feeds: Algae, stale bread, spent coffee grounds, leafy produce and brewery grains.
The study found that worms fed waste coffee grounds had the highest lipid levels and some DHA but had lower protein.
Worms fed the algae feed also did fairly well with the highest protein, ARA and EPA levels but lower lipids.
Discussing shellfish aquaculture, one seminar session examined how mussel farming gear poses a risk to whales and turtles and how this risk can be mitigated.
Scott Lindell from the Marine Biological Laboratory, showed that entanglement cases all seem to involve mussel spat collecting ropes.
There will be more coverage from the conference published on TheFishSite in the next week, including our video interviews on the future of fish nutrition and Asian and Brazilian aquaculture, so keep an eye out!
