Aquaculture Dialogues will be launched for seriola and cobia in February in Seattle. The announcement by the World Wildlife Fund yesterday marks the 12th species to be covered by the Dialogues, a process of creating credible standards for minimizing the key environmental and social impacts related to aquaculture.
The Dialogue will focus on standards for seriola rivoliana, seriola lalandi and seriola quinqueradiata (also known as kampachi, hamachi or hiramasa) and cobia that are farmed in the Americas region. The world's leading seriola and cobia farming experts and stakeholders are expected to attend the open meeting, to be held in conjunction with the Aquaculture America conference.
"There is a pressing need to establish sustainability standards for these species, as they are now poised on the brink of explosive growth," says Neil Anthony Sims, president of the Ocean Stewards Institute and president of Kona Blue Water Farms in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. "Criteria that allow individual farms to be evaluated, and rewarded, will encourage producers to aspire to better practices. What is then better for the farmers is also then better for our oceans."
