The big challenges

Some of the big challenges we are facing as inhabitants of planet earth, and its impact on fisheries, were the main focus of study during the third week of the 2023-24 Six-month training programme.

It was another busy schedule for our fellows, including seminars, tutorials, field trips and a joint workshop with guests from the Faroe Islands.

The week started with a series of seminars on the impact of global warming and pollution on fisheries, followed with talk on trends in world fisheries and aquaculture and on the role of research, innovation, education and vocational training in dealing with all these.

This was, like in previous week, accompanied by tutorials on professional communications and scientific data management.

Wednesday we were gests of Matis for the whole day, focusing on value addition, quality management, full utilisation and food safety.

Thursday was organised as a workshop on aquaculture. Together with the five FTP follows specialising in sustainable aquaculture, partners from Fiskaaling in the Faroe Islands and from MFRI, shared information on the status and prospects for the sector.

In the afternoon workshop participants had the opportunity to visit the Matis Aquaculture Research Station in Keldnaholt, where the RAS-water circulating system and ongoing feed experiments received great interests and thoughts about possible future research projects.

The day finished off with a field trip to Vaki in Kópavogur, which is famous for its equipment for aquaculture – graders, pumps, counters, biomass estimation tools and so on.

The week ended with a presentation session, Friday, in which the FTP fellows introduced fish processing and aquaculture in their home countries.

Yes it was another very very busy week.