ASTRAL & AquaVitae teams in front of their shared booth at Europe Aquaculture, Rimini, September 2022
The Belém Statement on Atlantic Research and Innovation Cooperation (2017) aims at building bridges across the Atlantic. Thus, collaboration with the Atlantic Research Community has been active since the origin of AquaVitae in 2019.
2022 has been particularly fruitful. We have successfully made this collaboration visible in many ways: hosting workshops, participating in discussions and organizing webinars and virtual conferences.
Sister projects working together
AquaVitae has worked particularly closely with its sister project, ASTRAL – All Atlantic Ocean Sustainable, Profitable and Resilient Aquaculture. Increasing the use of low trophic aquaculture products and systems is something we have in common with our sister project.
The sister projects AquaVitae and ASTRAL have identified stakeholders to work on governance analysis on low trophic aquaculture. With similar aims in mind and increasing use of low trophic aquaculture products and systems, both projects have joint forces and held a series of workshops and stakeholder consultations together.
The collaboration between AquaVitae and ASTRAL has been strong since the beginning of the projects. An example of this is the common dissemination of project results at the biggest aquaculture event in Europe: European Aquaculture Society (EAS). For the last couple of years, we have shared a booth at the EAS conference, promoting both projects together and participating at each other´s workshops. This has been contributing to synergies between the projects.
Annual Summit in South Africa
In November 2022 the AquaVitae annual summit took place in Morgan Bay, South Africa. The annual summit was an opportunity to learn more about the aquaculture industry in South Africa. It also explored the possibilities for collaboration in establishing a platform for the further exchange of scientific knowledge and best practices for sustainable aquaculture development.
During the AquaVitae trip to South Africa, some of the AquaVitae consortium participated in a mirror platform hosted by EATiP. The EATiP platform event was held in Cape Town right after the AquaVitae annual summit. Outputs from South Africa was presented at the EATiP event,and participants explored the possibilities of creating a mirror platform in South Africa. This is not the first time AquaVitae members participated in an EATiP mirror platform. Several members also joined EATiP’s mirror platform in Brazil 2021. Participating in these events help to build synergies between the AquaVitae industry and scientific partners.
Looking forward
In April AquaVitae and ASTRAL will organize a workshop in Brazil next to the annual meeting of AquaVitae and the event Aquaciência held by the Brazilian partners.
We also plan to continue our cooperation at the EAS 2023 that will take place between 18-21 September in Viennna, Austria. AquaVitae looks forward to continuing this collaboration in 2023.
