The event opening will take place at the Prague Congress Centre in the evening of Saturday, September 1 and will feature short welcome speeches from Petr Bendl, Czech Minister of Agriculture;  Maive Rute, Director for Biotechnology, Agriculture and Food research in DG RTD of the European Commission and Qingyin Wang, Director general/Senior scientist with Yellow Sea Fisheries Research Institute and Chinese Academy of Fishery Sciences.

The opening ceremony will be followed by the AQUA 2012 Welcome Reception.

Keynote presentations of AQUA 2012 address the theme of the event, namely “Global Aquaculture – Securing our Future”.

The two presentations will provide industry and science perspectives on the different aspects of the theme, which has obvious implication in global and regional food security and aquaculture trade. It also refers to economic and environmental sustainability and the image of aquaculture activities. Our future is what we make of it now – how we alleviate poverty; how we manage our future resource needs and especially how we educate, train and manage knowledge for the next generation of aquaculture researchers, producers and other stakeholders.

Petter Arnesen

Petter Arnesen has more than 20 years experience in various sectors of the salmon industry. Petter gained a Ph.D. degree in animal nutrition from the University of Life Sciences (UMB), Norway, in 1993. He currently serves as Group Technical Breeding & Genetics Manager of Marine Harvest Group (new position established 2011). He was Vice President Feed & Environment in Marine Harvest ASA before that and continues to be involved in sustainability processes.  Previous jobs include that of Technical Director Marine Harvest ASA, Vice President Corporate Quality and Feed of Fjord Seafood ASA, Executive Director of BioMar Chile, R&D Director of the BioMar Group, and research scientist at AKVAFORSK (now Nofima Marine) in Norway.

Petter is a member of the Board of the European Aquaculture & Innovation Platform (EATIP); the Steering committee of the WWF headed Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue; the Board of MareLife (Norwegian marine innovation network); the Advisory Group ISO TC234; the Technical committee of  the International Fishmeal and Fish Oil Organisation’s  Responsible Sourcing Standard and the Supervisory Board of the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Aquatic Epidemiology at the Atlantic Veterinary College, Prince Edward Island.

Dr Geoff Allan is the Principal Director, Fisheries and Director of the Port Stephens Fisheries Institute, Department of Primary Industries NSW, Australia.  He led the aquaculture research unit for NSW for over 15 years and has worked extensively as a Fisheries Program Consultant for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) to develop and manage projects in developed countries, primarily PNG and Vietnam.  Geoff has led national & international research on aquaculture & nutrition and was a Theme Leader for Aquaculture Production in the Australian Seafood Cooperative Research Centre.  He is a founding Trustee of Aquaculture without Frontiers & a Past-President of the World Aquaculture Society and the Asian-Pacific Chapter of the World Aquaculture Society. Geoff is an editor on three international scientific journals, Co-Editor of the book, New Technologies in Aquaculture and author of over 80 scientific papers and over 150 other articles or reports on aquaculture.

Read more about AQUA 2012 and the conference program