Lukas is the Managing Director of Seafood Consulting Associates in Thailand, a specialist consulting firm formed in 2001. The firm’s primary client is the U.S. Soybean Export Council (USSEC) and Lukas has led the USSEC Southeast Asia Aquaculture Program since 2002, first as a Regional Manager for the Asian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia (2002-2008), then as the Technical Director for Aquaculture in Southeast Asia (2008-2015) and now as the Aquaculture Program Technical Contractor for USSEC. He leads a team of USSEC contractors, with active USSEC programs in Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Recently he has been heavily involved with the creation of the first standardized aquaculture feed formulation database, the International Aquaculture Feed Formulation Database (IAFFD) and associated use of the IAFFD for training of aquaculture formulators. Lukas has also been involved in several professional aquaculture societies. In addition to being a member of the Asia Fisheries Society, he was a member of the World Aquaculture Society’s Asian Pacific Chapter Board from 2009 to 2015. During his time as President of the Chapter from (2011 to 2013) he worked closely with the WAS APC Board to achieve several notable goals, with the primary ones being several successful international conferences, two targeted symposia in the Middle East and Japan, and the establishment of the position of a permanent Executive Director for WAS APC and a Chapter Home Office. His primary interest is to see the rapid expansion of a profitable, but sustainable, aquaculture industry in Asia and the world, particularly in the marine fish sector. He hopes to see the near-term development of an industrial, offshore marine fish cage aquaculture sector in Southeast Asia and has been working with various levels of the marine fish aquaculture production chain to create the conditions for this to be possible.
