The first Aquaculture conference at IceFish is underway.<\/p>\n
The conference, “Aquaculture \u2013 Driving Sustainable Growth” conference, was opened by the Chair, \u00d3l\u00f6f Helga J\u00f3nsd\u00f3ttir. \u00d3l\u00f6f is a Board Member of the Iceland Aquaculture and Ocean Forum (IAOF), and CPO of Kaldvik, the only fisheries company operating in the rugged east of Iceland.<\/p>\n
On opening the Conference she commented, \u201cShare the passion and the vision, and pass it on,\u201d before introducing the first session – “Blue Food Futures, Policy Partnerships and Global Growth.”<\/p>\n
The first speaker was Clara Jegousse, Data Analyst at the Iceland Ocean Cluster who offered the latest insights from the Cluster. Her presentation included fascinating data right across the aquaculture sector, including Finfish, Aquatic plants, Molluscs and Crustaceans.<\/p>\n
China still leads the way in production volume, with 58% in 2024, followed by Indonesia and India. Norway, Egypt and Chile are the bottom of the top ten, all with 1%.<\/p>\n
The fastest growing Aquaculture producers by volume, from 2000 to 2024, are Uganda, Tanzania and Saudi Arabia. According to the 2024 data Iceland is growing faster than China, Norway and Egypt.<\/p>\n
When the figures are looked at for fastest growing Aquaculture producers by value, from 2000 to 2024 Iceland is only just behind Saudi Arabia at 37x whilst Uganda and Tanzania stand at 311x and 559x, respectively.<\/p>\n
Clara went on to compare the value of the individual species across the world with aquatic plants and crustaceans beginning to move the percentages away from Finfish in some countries, notably China, Vietnam and Ecuador.<\/p>\n
The presentation also included data on production value and species diversity.<\/p>\n
It is clear that such data is going to be vital for the future development of the Aquaculture sector.<\/p>\n
The second speaker was Kevin S. Edwards, Vice President, Global Market Development at Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST). He first introduced the GDST Vision, \u201cA world where universally adopted, digital traceability promotes trust in fishery and aquaculture supply chains.\u201d and went on to say that the mission “revolved around education, global communication and being partner driven before confirming that the goal is “for global trends to enhance traceability and visibility through the cross-sector collaboration.”<\/p>\n
He explored why digital interoperability is key, explaining that it is the ability of software systems to exchange and interpret data without the need for human intervention.<\/p>\n
He then focused on the need for Government engagement and policy influence and, importantly, why finance and investors are particularly interested in digital traceability.<\/p>\n
Using projects in Indonesia and East Coast Seafood Group as case studies he explored the future and what can be achieved.<\/p>\n
Kevin Edwards concluded, \u201cFor most internationally traded seafood, the future compliance standard is likely to be: digital, end-to-end, auditable traceability linking vessel or farm origin, chain of custody, legality, labour conditions, environmental impacts and product movement from source to consumer \u2013 this needs governments, CSO and industry to work collaboratively together with standardized digital data!\u201d<\/p>\n
Egill \u00deorri Steingrimsson, Director for Coordination, MAST-Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority continued the session with a discussion on how the future of blue food depends on building growth through trust.<\/p>\n
He indicated that, “the seafood industry is leading the way in terms of technology and innovation.”<\/p>\n
He contended that effective policy, strong official oversight, and credible standards in food safety, animal health and welfare are not barriers to growth, but essential foundations for sustainable expansion and international market access.<\/p>\n
One of his main points was that \u201cRegulation does not create the market. But credible regulation can make the market possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a thought-proving presentation he used the example of The Hygiene Package \/ EEA food framework as a piece of European Law which has worked well and created a common regulatory language.<\/p>\n
He concluded the presentation with these three points:<\/p>\n
Common standards reduce friction between markets while keeping operator responsibility clear.<\/p>\n
Official controls, surveillance and certification have commercial value because other countries must trust the system.<\/p>\n
Clear rules and stable expectations allow producers to innovate, plan and grow responsibly.<\/p>\n
Following the presentation the speakers took part in a question-and-answer session.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The conference, “Aquaculture \u2013 Driving Sustainable Growth” conference, was opened by the Chair, \u00d3l\u00f6f Helga J\u00f3nsd\u00f3ttir. \u00d3l\u00f6f is a Board Member of the Iceland Aquaculture and Ocean Forum (IAOF), and CPO of Kaldvik, the only fisheries company operating in the rugged east of Iceland. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":12057,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,70],"tags":[176,112,198],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-12056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquaculture","category-aquaculture-equipment","tag-aquaculture","tag-icefish","tag-ocean"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12058,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12056\/revisions\/12058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12056"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=12056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}