Excellency in Aquaculture Science, Extension and Education

Excellency in Science

Excellency in science does not depend solely on the amount of talent one has. Healthy competition, based on peer review, trustful and effective collaboration and the amount of grant money available to the researchers are playing an important role in providing the appropriate ingredients for high-level research. We need to look into ways to tighten the collaboration among university and research institutions researchers and submit together larger scale grant proposals that will enable us to compete for the biggest possible grants on the national level. Being aware of our relative isolation in Hawai’i, we should work toward creating consortium on the national level with other institutions in different states while targeting a common research problem or aquaculture product. 

The New Extension Agents

Extension agents are an important link between the researcher and the farmer. This is the basis upon which the current, advanced agriculture industry in the US earned its reputation worldwide. Nowadays, with the federal pressure on governors and all the state departments, to cut their expenses, aquaculture seems to be one of the first fields to pay the price. We are already seeing this in the State of Hawai’i and we are hearing of similar cuts in other states throughout the nation. The fact is, that if people stop eating fish, the states’ populations are not going to show signs of stress in comparison to cutting on security (e.g., military and police) and energy (e.g., fuel and electricity), or even public health services, in the short run. Nonetheless, as time passes, public health services will have to increase their expenses dramatically as a result of the significant health deterioration of all those communities that had moved to diets of processed cheap protein such as canned meat, rather than fresh aquaculture products.

The continuous decline of global fisheries and the increased demand for aquaculture products will eventually lead to a higher demand for a specialized work force. Thus, we must build a skilled and reliable workforce that will be able to tackle a broad range of issues from growing fish, shrimp and algae, to producing bio-fuels and all that is in between, including servicing the aquarium industry. Educational institutions such as universities must then develop educational programs suitable to the task. Unfortunately, time is against us, since it generally takes about 5 years to develop a good and solid graduate program and get it running. Again, with the present economic situation it will be very hard to convince the states to devote monies for such cause while their citizens are out of jobs and hungry. Nonetheless, with all the pain and hardship, states’ task teams should look to future needs and plan ahead since it is quite evident that the current crisis is temporary. Interestingly enough, while the car industry is failing there is ongoing demand for skilled people in the internet-network industry.