By HunSik Chu, Water INTERface IGEP student

There have been lot of amazing researches and advancements in aquaculture technologies in recent years. This is due to the fast-evolving world of booming global population, increasing food shortage problem, scarcity of habitable lands, loss of potable water, and acceleration of global warming. In order to solve these problems, aquaculture is getting more attention than ever before.

In order to learn more about the whole industry, I attended 2016 Aquaculture Triannual Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada in February. This specific conference is held every three year by multiple aquaculture related sponsors such as World Aquaculture Society, National Shellfisheries Association, American Fisheries Society, and National Aquaculture Association. Because of its size, it is a must attend for anyone involved in the aquaculture industry.

Scientific conferences are always highly intellectually stimulating because it is not just about researches. There are scientists, aquaculturists, seafood processors, aquaculture technology engineers and etc. This mingling of everyone involved in aquaculture is refreshing to be part of. Sometimes, researchers are so wrapped in their own bubble that they forget the importance of how the food processors, aquaculturists, consumers, and researchers are all interconnected in tight web.

One thing I have noticed at the conference was how big of disconnection existed between the aquaculture industry and the consumers. Currently, most focused area is creating sustainable practices while maximizing production levels. Here, Maximizing production is the key factor. Therefore, most talks I’ve attended mentions mostly about the importance of their researches by relating to the improvement of production efficiency. Considering the growth of human population, insufficient supply of high quality protein diet is really important. Not only this is where the money lies, but also has ethical importance. However, because aquaculture industry is so warped around providing enough food to the market, quality and consumer-producer dialogue has received minimal attention.

There is an obvious benefits of improving production efficiency in aquaculture industry. However, I’m afraid that if we don’t think more than production we’ll go down the road of unsustainable practices including habitat destructions, antiobiotics and pollutant contamination, or low quality products leading to consumers refusing to buy the products due to health or moral stances. It is also true that catering fully towards consumers who are not always aware of all aspects of the industry can be destructive as well. Therefore, good balance of open communications and transparency can really alleviate many problems.

I believe we’re heading in the right directions. Aquaculture industry is growing in order to provide quality protein sources all around the world. It is also improving the quality of the products to more health-conscious consumers. Lastly, it is also working hard to push for cleaner and safer food source. Aquaculturists are aware of the problems involving waste water, natural habitat disruptions, antibiotic overuses, and etc. However, doing all the good things without properly communicating to the consumers will negatively impact the the industry. Therefore, I would like to suggests to the aquaculture industry to be more actively involved with the consumers and distribution companies (i.e. supermarkets) to improve the image of aquacultured products.

For further readings:
FAO. (2014). FAO Yearbook 2012. (ISSN 2070-6057). Statistics and Information Branch: Fisheries and Aquaculture Department.
Naylor, R. L., Goldburg, R. J., Primavera, J. H., Kautsky, N., Beveridge, M. C., Clay, J., … & Troell, M. (2000). Effect of aquaculture on world fish supplies. Nature, 405(6790), 1017-1024.
The World Bank. (2014). Sustainable Aquaculture. World Bank Group.  http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/environment/brief/sustainable-aquaculture

By Naerin Baek, Water INTERface student

I attended the American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting and Exposition from March 13^th through 17^th in San Diego, California.  The theme of this spring’s ACS National Meeting was “Computers in Chemistry.” The ACS National Meeting is one of the largest science and engineering conferences as over 10,000 people such as scientists, engineers, undergraduate and graduate students and other professionals attend each year, and  there were more than 30 technical divisions each providing various chemistry-related presentations, industry exhibitions, educational workshops, career fairs, social events and receptions. With the conferences size and various programs which it offers, it was important for me to plan my time wisely so that I can learn and experience others’ research work and network with other conference participants.

I presented my Ph.D. research project in the division of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.  It was such a great experience to share my Ph.D. research project with other researchers outside of the department as well as learning other researcher’s innovative work, advanced technology and potential impacts to our society through their presentations.

Among many creative research works, one of the interesting presentations was “Hydrophobically-modified nanoporous silica aerogel: Novel food contact surface inhibiting adhesion of gram negative and gram positive bacteria”, which was presented by a Ph.D. student from Material Science and Engineering at Texas A & M University.  His presentation was about the impact of hydrophobically modified nanoporous silica aerogel which significantly reduced bacteria contamination such as gram positive and gram negative bacteria more effectively than hydrophilic and hydrophobic nanoporous silica material due to the formation of air pocket with hydrophobic properties restricting adhesion of bacteria on the contact surfaces.  The hydrophobically modified nanoporous silica aerogel showed better antiadhesive effects for reduction of bacterial contamination compared to the common food contact materials such as glass, polycarbonate and stainless steel.

I think his research has the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary features with Nanotechnology, Material Science and Engineering, Microbiology and Food Science that can potentially be applied to prevent bacteria contaminations on food contact surfaces such as food packaging, food processing facilities and food preparing facilities. Additional interesting thing about his presentation was use of the hydrophobic modification technique for nanoporous silica aerogel.  It was an innovative way to increase efficiency of the material that can prevent bacteria contamination on the contact surfaces. The antiadhesive hygienic material would have potential for use on various surfaces and environments where the places require high sanitization and disinfection in order to prevent cross contamination.

As I attended others’ presentations and learned about their research areas, nanomaterial and applications, new technology and efficient methods for analysis, and software programs for analysis, it was a valuable learning and eye-opening experience to help me broadening my perspectives. I felt that most of the presentations I attended were not limited to a single discipline, rather the studies were comprised of multiple characteristics of interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary studies to provide more effective solutions to be applied in a variety of fields.

The experience gave me great inspirations and lots of learning opportunities in agriculture and food chemistry as well as other disciplines. I hope to attend the ACS conference next year in San Francisco.