May 18, 2021

 

Applications sought for ninth annual Global Aquaculture Innovation Award

 

 

The Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) is now accepting applications for its ninth annual Global Aquaculture Innovation Award.

 

The application deadline is June 15.

 

Established in 2012, the competition recognises individuals and companies finding new solutions to the key challenges facing aquaculture.

 

Examples of aquaculture innovations include technologies that mitigate the occurrence of animal diseases or parasites, or that reduce or eliminate the use of antibiotics to treat animals; technologies that improve production efficiencies at the hatchery or farm levels while mitigating environmental impact; advances in offshore or land-based recirculation technologies; novel feed ingredients; reductions in carbon footprint through improved energy efficiency or regeneration; and social programmes designed to improve living and working conditions at the farm or processing levels.

 

University of Stirling postdoctoral researcher Simão Zacarias was the recipient of last year's eighth annual Global Aquaculture Innovation Award, sponsored by Lineage Logistics, for his work on the shrimp-hatchery practice of unilateral eyestalk ablation.

 

Zacarias' research debunked the notion that the practice results in higher egg production and showed that it actually escalates disease vulnerability.

 

Last year, GAA received a total of 30 applications from 17 countries — Belgium, Canada, Chile, Denmark, India, Indonesia, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Panama, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Tanzania and Thailand.

 

For this year's award, three finalists will be selected by five judges among a pool of applicants. The finalists will be invited to present at a GOAL 2021 virtual event in the fall.

 

Once again this year, the winner will be selected by audience vote.

 

The competition is coordinated by GAA Standards Coordinator Dan Lee.

 

In addition to Lee, the judges are GAA president and founder Dr. George Chamberlain and existing and former GAA Standards Oversight Committee members Alejandro Buschmann of i-mar Research and the Development Center of Coastal Resources and Environments; Dawn Purchase of the Marine Conservation Society; and Michael Tlusty of the University of Massachusetts-Boston.

 

- GAA