By Natalia Manzocco

NEW BRUNSWICK (Telegraph Journal).- Four hundred delegates from the Canadian aquaculture industry are meeting in the city this week to discuss innovations and the challenges they face.

Noel Chenier/Telegraph-JournalCyr Couturier, president-elect of the Aquaculture Association of Canada, says aquaculture currently represents 47 per cent of global seafood production.
 
Aquaculture Canada 2008, a national forum focused on developing a sustainable fish farming industry, wraps up today at the Delta Brunswick hotel.
 
"Ten years ago, aquaculture was about 20 per cent of global seafood production. Now it's 47 per cent, and it'll probably hit 50 per cent next year." said Cyr Couturier, president-elect of the Aquaculture Association of Canada, which hosted the event.
 
Couturier said worldwide production of wild seafood has remained relatively static for the past 35 years.
 
"But populations are growing, and demand is growing," he said.
 
The location was fitting for this year's conference, since Saint John is "at the hub of the East Coast aquaculture industry," Couturier said. "This general area - southwestern New Brunswick - is the most important aquaculture area in Canada, next to British Columbia."
 
Last year, New Brunswick's fish farming industry netted more than $250 million. More than 4,000 people work for the province's aquaculture firms, many of them crucial sources of income for rural communities.
 
Keynote speaker James L. Anderson, the chair of the University of Rhode Island's department of environmental and natural resource economics, spoke Tuesday about aquaculture's ability to eventually dominate the global seafood trade.
 
Since fish farmers don't have to depend upon government influence, or the strain of many companies fishing in the same spot, they can control their market and advertise their product with more certainty, he said.
 
"The nature of the harvest process undermines the possibility for long-term market planning. But if you've got a bunch of fish in the pond, you know that one year from now, you'll have a bunch of fish, so you can spend that time marketing."
 
Once the industry, which is still rapidly changing, has a handle on production, Anderson predicts that seafood producers could band together to create "generic" marketing, much like the dairy industry's Got Milk? campaign.
 
"The potential benefits are high. Whether the industry can get its act together is another question," he said.
 
Other keynote speakers at the event reflected the event's focus on the health benefits of fish, a factor that Couturier says will prove beneficial to the aquaculture industry.
 
"People are realizing that eating seafood has health benefits - wild or farmed, it doesn't matter," he said.
 
Dr. Bruce Holub, a health and nutritional sciences professor at the University of Guelph, spoke at the conference Monday about the cardiovascular disease-fighting properties of omega-3 fatty acids.

Source: http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com