Scientists, sea farmers attend Northeast Aquaculture Conference
More than 500 attendees, including sea farmers and marine researchers from the Damariscotta area, attended the Northeast Aquaculture Conference & Exposition held Jan. 11–13 in Providence, Rhode Island.
“There was a really good number of producers and scientists, including a lot of young people there, both from the entrepreneur side and science side,” says Dana Morse, Extension associate at Maine Sea Grant based at the University of Maine Darling Marine Center in Walpole.
“We created the conference in 1998 because we wanted to bring together growers, researchers and others who are involved in the industry from around the region,” says Chris Davis, organizer of the event and executive director of the Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center, also based at the DMC. “It was great to see so many people there, especially producers.”
The three-day event was partnered with the 37th Milford Aquaculture Seminar and featured educational presentations, workshops, field trips to research facilities and farms, and a tradeshow with industry-related vendors.
Cheyenne Adams, a graduate student at the DMC who studies oyster feeding activity and food quality for the Maine EPSCoR Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Network, attended the conference for the first time.
“NACE was an awesome experience,” she says. “I presented preliminary data and proposed hypotheses for future research during the poster session, which sparked conversation with growers and drew invaluable scholarly advice from research faculty.”
Morse says the technical information was excellent, and he was most impressed by the attention aquaculture is garnering and the excitement displayed by people involved with it.
“Out in the hall you’d see clusters of people,” Morse says. “They’re talking shop. That’s a really good function of an event like this.”