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believes the answer to this major food security problem could be aquaculture, which may become one of the boom industries of the 21st century and potentially the world's largest livestock sector. "What has changed since last century is that our food systems now face critical limitations – there are emerging scarcities of just about everything that we need to produce good quality food: water, land, nutrients, oil, technology, skills, wild fi sh, fi nance and stable climates," Mr Cribb said that by 2050, many cities will have 20, 30 and even 40 million inhabitants – Jakarta and Manila just to the north will each have 35 to 36 million in them, far more than live in Australia. "One of the most urgent needs of the 21st century will be to re-design the system for sustainable food production. The modern food system is utterly dependent on oil, and food in fact accounts for one-third of the world's energy use, most of it in transport and cool storage. " What does all this mean for aquaculture? Mr Cribb says that by the second half of this century, it will grow steadily to become the biggest food producing industry in the world. "Put simply, fi sh turn inedible plants and organic waste into edible food more effi ciently than do other domestic livestock. They can do so without competing for land and water currently used by agriculture, the wilderness or other services." ALGAE, THE NEW SUPERCROP Conference speaker Julian Cribb also envisages huge algae farms – on land, at sea and in salt lakes – producing food for people, feed for animals, biofuels for transport, pharmaceuticals, plastics and fi ne chemicals. He said, "These farms will in turn be nourished on the vast stream of nutrients emitted by the world's cities, as they begin to recycle food waste, organic waste and sewage. " Mr Cribb said by the second half of the century, algae culture could easily become the biggest cropping industry on Earth – and, in an area no larger than a big sheep station, algae farmers could be producing most of the world's transport and aviation fuels. AUSTRALASIAN AQUACULTURE AWARD WINNERS ANNOUNCED The inaugural Australasian Aquaculture Awards, sponsored by the Global Aquaculture Alliance Best Aquaculture Practices certifi cation program, were presented on May 2 by BAP Vice President of Development Peter Redmond, during the "Articulture" event at Australasian Aquaculture Conference 2012 in Melbourne, Australia. Tassal Operations Pty Ltd won the Aquaculture Production Award; AU$25,000 to develop an e-learning program and mentoring opportunities for students interested in aquaculture as a career. The Fish Oil Replacement in Australian Aquafeed project won the Aquaculture Science Research Award. Project work by Prof. Chris Carter (University of Tasmania), Dr. David Francis (Australian Institute of Marine Science), Dr. Peter Nichols (CSIRO Food Futures Flagship) and Dr. Giovanni Turchini (Deakin University) is helping Australian aquaculturists reduce dependence on imported fi sh oil as an ingredient in aquafeed. Sealite Pty. Ltd. won the Aquaculture Service Provider Award. Sealite designs and manufactures marine navigation aids and the widest range of solar-powered LED lanterns in the marketplace, which are used by fi sh farmers to identify the boundaries of their farms. Presenting the inaugural awards called 'Blue Thumbs', BAP Vice President of Development Peter Redmond said, "The farms and plants that participate in BAP certifi cation, and these award winners, are working toward the improvements that will be needed to sustainably farm more seafood over the coming years." It is anticipated the awards will become an integral part of the Australasian aquaculture scene in the future. AQUACULTURE INDUSTRY MUST REDUCE RELIANCE ON FISHMEAL AND FISH OIL James Rose, Managing Director of Skretting in Australia has warned that if the aquaculture industry remains reliant on fi shmeal and fi sh oil, future growth will be severely restricted. "Our key focus in recent years has been how to reduce or eliminate the reliance of the industry on fi shmeal as a key ingredient in fi sh food. Through Skretting's MicroBalanceTM product we have now moved our diets from having in excess of 20 percent fi shmeal down to 8 percent as a typical level today. Our ultimate goal is to have a product so that we don't have to use fi shmeal at all. That would mean we don't have a reliance on what is a very limited resource and it opens up a much more sustainable future because we are no longer reliant on that very fi nite resource. The priority now is working on how not to be reliant on fi sh oil. The aquaculture industry already uses 80 percent of fi sh oil available in the world today and there is no more fi sh oil available. As we are not able to harvest more fi sh out of the ocean to get that fi sh oil, what we have to do is look for new sources of omega-3." Over the next ten years our focus will be very much pushing through with sustainable aquafeeds and that means increasing our knowledge of nutrition and expanding the palate of raw materials that are available for use in fi sh foods so we are not reliant on any individual raw materials. Skretting will also be developing a whole spectrum of diets tailored to the specifi c growth phase of the fi sh, including health promoting diets, anti-stress diets, specialist diets for summers and winters. It is all about how we can support the industry to be as productive and as effi cient as it can." CRAB CAKES A FAST TRACK SUCCES S Dr Janet Howieson, based at the Centre of Excellence for Science, Seafood and Health at Curtin University in Western Australia, told the conference of a new fast track process that can halve the time to commercialisation of seafood products. She said the development process for new seafood products, from identifying an appropriate raw material through to defi ning a product and securing a market, typically takes more than three years. But this was reduced to 15 months to full commercialisation in a pilot project. In the Accelerated Product Innovation Project focusing on Blue Swimmer Crabs, a group of chefs were asked to suggest possible products that could be developed from three base ingredients: premium crab meat, mince and stock. 99 product concepts were assessed by a technical team for the 'real world' factors such as ease of large scale production, supply from a remote location, potential markets, and costs of production. This stage reduced the list to 19, and further assessments reduced the list to 7. The next stage saw production of the product concepts at a commercial seafood processing facility under realistic conditions, where the number was reduced to 6. The fi nal stage involved detailed evaluation of shelf life, packaging, compositional analysis and costs, followed by production of signifi cant volumes of each product for the secondary consultation phase including interviews with chefs and tastings by participants at a major restaurant trade exhibition. The fi nal crab cake product provides a great model for the fast track development of other seafood products. JULY/AUGUST 2012 ■ NZ AQUACULTURE ■ 7

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