EAS-SG July/August Newsletter

JULY/AUGUST NEWSLETTER

This is the JULY/AUGUST - edition of the European Aquaculture Society Student Group (EAS-SG) Newsletter. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to all students and young people that might have the same interest in the work of the European Aquaculture Society Student Group (EAS-SG) like you do.

Yours sincerely,

Lena, Stefan, Anna, Guerrino and Benedikt

SUMMARY:

1. News about Aquaculture Europe 2010

a) Field trips

b) Travel grants

2. Call for membership to the EASSG

3. Upcoming events

1. News about Aquaculture Europe 2010

a) Field trips

As mentioned in previous newsletters, we have organized the opportunity for all our members (and those that want to become a member) to join us on our topic related field trips. We have two whole-day trips currently organized. The first (student field trip) is on Tuesday, 5^th October and the second (official field trip) on Saturday, 9^th October. You can register for either of them or both by sending an email to info@eassg.org now.

Student field trip

Our student field trip will lead us to a semi-intensive farm (sea bass and sea bream) in Ilhavo (Aveiro). In the afternoon we will either be going to a shellfish farm nearby or visit an aquaculture research institute nearby. We will be going by car and lunch is included. More information on the field trip will be dispersed to you in the next newsletters or updated on our homepage.

This is your unique chance to join us, and remember we invite you and so it will be FREE. We would love if you could join us, plus it will be a good chance to establish a first contact before the start of the conference.

Official field trip

The official field trip organized by the European Aquaculture Society will be going to two fish farms. In the morning: Aquacria - a company devoted to intensive fish production. The company owns a turbot fish farm with an installed capacity of 120 ton/year, which will be expanded to a 350 ton/year farm trough the installation of a hyper-intensive production system. For the last 11 years the company has been producing high quality turbot. During 2009 expansion investment will be made which allow us to produce sole additionally to turbot. The production is based in Recirculation Aquaculture System Technology, that allows a full control in the main production parameters like water quality, temperature and health resulting in fast growth and high quality product. Aquacria is a leading company in the Recirculation Aquaculture System Technology (RAS), particularly innovating by the introduction of Shallow Raceway System Technology in conjunction with RAS. The fish is produced in stacktanks that can go up to five levels maximising land and construction resources. This production system can be utilised for several fish species, but the Company is specially focused in flat fish species like turbot and sole.

In the afternoon, visit of MaterAqua – Partner of the project SOCRATE (Soft crab technology in Europe). This project is looking at the commercialization of soft green crab production in the most cost-effective manner. To do this, three different populations of green crabs from Portugal, Scotland and Ireland are being characterized. They will look at various means of capturing the crabs and try out different systems of aquaculture. They will evaluate the cost of producing soft green crabs using their newly developed system. This will look at all aspects, through production, processing, packing and storage to detailed market research, in an effort to bring hard science to what previously was a soft artisanal-like process.

We, the student group offer a 50% funding and a special offer price for students on the official field trip planned by the EAS. We have 10 places for the trip to AVEIRO, visiting the RAS turbot facility and the soft green crab project. This trip costs usually 63,30 €, but with our funding and special student price we brought it down to only 30€.

The field trip will be on Saturday, October 9, from 9.00 o clock till 17.00 in the afternoon. We will be going by AC-bus and lunch is included.

b) Travel Grants

Congratulations to all grantees of the 2010 EAS-SG student travel grant. We are this year in the position to help out TEN students with travel grants in making Porto available for them. Each winner has been contacted personally and was offered a travel grant of 200 € each. We are looking forward very much to meeting all winners in Porto in a few month and seeing you at the field trips.

The European Aquaculture Society Student Group (EAS-SG) promotes the participation of its members in the NACEE-Conference (Second NACEE Conference of Young Researchers, Szarvas, Hungary, 30th-31st August 2010). Participation of young researchers from any other institution meeting these criteria is encouraged as well.

EAS-SG June Newsletter

JUNE NEWSLETTER

This is the JUNE - edition of the European Aquaculture Society Student Group (EAS-SG) Newsletter. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to all students and young people that might have the same interest in the work of the European Aquaculture Society Student Group (EAS-SG) like you do.

Yours sincerely,

Lena, Stefan, Anna, Guerrino and Benedikt

SUMMARY:

1. News about Aquaculture Europe 2010,

a) Students have a special schedule

b) Last call for travel grants!!!

c) Field trips

2. Call for candidature for the EASSG board

3. Young Marine Scientists network meeting Germany

4. AquaTNET meeting Szarvas, Hungary

5. “Skilling me softly…”

6. Upcoming events

1. News about Aquaculture Europe 2010

a) Students have a special schedule

Those of you that have already decided to go to the AE2010 conference (thumbs up to you guys!!) should be aware of the special student schedule before you book your flights and accommodations. The official conference-program runs from Tuesday evening (5^th October) until Friday afternoon (8^th October).

As we have this year the pleasure to offer you two field trips, please make sure you are in Porto to join our full-day trips on Tuesday (5^th) and Saturday (9^th). More information on this, you will find below. Book your flights accordingly! When you prepare your personal session-schedule, you should definitely plan on joining our student workshop and forum on Wednesday afternoon and block all your evening and night-time hours for our social activities (You will never walk alone ;-)

Regarding accommodation: The EAS has compiled a list of reasonably priced hostels especially for smaller budgets. Have a look here:

http://www.easonline.org/images/stories/Meetings/AE2010/AE2010_Porto_Hostels.pdf

b) Last call for travel grants

Are you up to going to a high-ranking international conference? Do you want to meet with fellow students and well-known researchers “face-to-face”? Do you want to get your foot into the scientific community? Then you really HAVE TO go to the Aquaculture Europe conference 2010 (AE2010). This event will happen from 5^th-8^th October in Porto, Portugal. Of course, these conferences always cost a fortune to participate, but this is not the case for AE2010! Students and young people under the age of 30 get a great discount on the registration fee and, when they are registered EAS members, can apply for one of our EAS-SG travel grants. You can apply for the grant, irrespective of your nationality, mother-language and if/or if not you intend to give an oral or poster presentation during the conference. The EAS-SG especially wants to support students and young people with limited financial funding possibilities to participate. If you do not receive any financial support for this trip, please state so in your application by giving a declaration of honor. Please send an application to our EAS-SG office (info@eassg.org) containing:

1. a letter of motivation

2. a short CV

3. a picture of yourself

4. declaration of honor (optional)

The ultimate deadline for application is the 30^th June.

c) Field trips

We have organized the possibility for you to join us on topic related field trips. For our own, student style, chaotic field trip we will go to a mussel farm surrounded by a wetland close to Porto. This is your unique chance to join us, and remember we invite you and so it will be for FREE. This trip will be organized on the 5^th of October, the day before the fare. We would love if you could join us, plus it will be a good chance to establish a first contact.

We also offer a 50% funding and a special bargain price for students on the official field trip planned by the EAS. We have 10 places for the trip to AVEIRO, visiting a RAS turbot facility and a soft green crab project. This trip costs usually 63.30 €, but with our funding and special student price we brought it down to only 30€. Not bad for a day of fully covered transportation, entertainment, science, food and drink, isn’t it?

Registration for both trips is open NOW! Please send your binding statement for joining both or only one of the trips to: info@eassg.org.

2. Call for candidature

The EAS Student Group Executive board and National Coordinators NEED YOU!

Like every year, we would like to open the candidature for the next EAS-SG executive board term 2010-11. When you have a look at our regulations (can be found on the website) you will see that the board gets elected annually by the student group members (YOU!). If you like to step into an active role in the EAS-SG and want to join the current team, hand in your candidature.

As taken from our EAS-SG regulation page: (http://www.eassg.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=62)

1. Elections shall take place, 2 months before the end of the office term, in order for new officers to be appointed as officers at the EAS conference.
2. The candidates can apply for each of the positions of the Executive board by writing a letter to the Election Committee.
3. All officers shall be elected by email or online voting organized by the election committee in partnership with the EAS board.
4. All EAS-SG members registered 2 months before the elections take place have the right to vote to elect the executive board of EAS-SG.

Eligible for board candidates (with the exception of president) are all members of the EAS-SG.

On the national level, we are working together with our National Coordinators. These EAS-SG members are our women and men “on the spot”. National coordinators have an important role in channeling information from the members to the trans-national level of the EAS-SG and vice versa. When you have a look at our website, you can see that we are still missing coordinators in some countries in Europe and we are always looking for contacts in overseas. We are currently trying to identify new, young and motivated national coordinators, who like to become involved.

Eligible for national coordinators are all persons who would like to contribute to a better network for students and young aquaculturists throughout Europe.

3. Young Marine Scientists network meeting Germany

Young marine research: Diversity and similarities

Last Saturday 12^th June the EAS-SG was involved in the first Young Marine Scientists Network Meeting of the German Marine Society. This student workshop under the title: “Young marine research: Diversity and similarities” was jointly organized for students and young researchers from all fields of research related to the aquatic environment, ranging from marine biology to chemistry, from fisheries science to aquaculture, from oceanographic modeling to socio-economy. Around 60 participants (BSc, Msc, PhD and postdocs) from more than 8 universities and research institutes actively participated in a full-day program with 4 dedicated sessions (one of them was on “Aquaculture”), listened to 14 talks and enjoyed a >20 poster-session. A best poster price was awarded to young researcher and postdoc Marc Hufnagl from IHF Hamburg presenting his work on “Climate-driven, bottom-up control of North sea herring recruitment”. The aquaculture session was the main session of the late afternoon and three speakers gave excellent perspectives on the aquaculture sector, covering the latest (German) research activities on RAS-technology at IMARE in Bremerhaven (presented by Kai Lorkowski), cell-culture technique applications in aquaculture at Fraunhofer Institute in Lübeck (presented by Sebastian Rakers) and an Indonesian field-study on socio-economic aspects of tropical mariculture presented by Liesa von Essen from ZMT Bremen. The session was chaired by Stefan Meyer, the current president-elect of the EAS Student Group.

The full book of abstracts can be downloaded from the EAS-SG website (partly in German). Currently, this year’s organizers are drafting a continuation of this successful event for the year 2011, but “the next time it will be an international event with even more opportunities for students and young researchers” says Marc Einsporn, the leading organizer from the study group of the German Marine Society.

4. AquaTNET meeting Szarvas, Hungary

A team of scientists, professors, industry and students working for us?

AquaTNET (www.aquatnet.com) is the European Thematic Network in the field of aquaculture, fisheries and aquatic resources management. The network is presently funded under the European Commission Lifelong Learning Programme, running from 2008-2011.

The AquaTNET Annual Event 2010 was held June 2-3, in Szarvas (Hungary). All AquaTNET members and stakeholders were invited to attend this important event to find out about the activities and results of the project and debate the hot topics in Education and Training. The meeting was hosted by the Research Institute for Fisheries, Aquaculture and Irrigation (HAKI) in Szarvas, Hungary.

At final completion of the project, AquaTNET will be able to offer a concise overview of possibilities and chances for Aquaculture students, such as a sector-wide overview of MSc/PhD courses from major European Universities, chances for working with industry, going abroad, overcoming language barriers and many more. We will keep you updated!

More information can be found in the weekly teaser (would you like to know more?).

5. “Skilling me softly…”

Call for surveys, “You got a minute of your time???”

The term “soft skill” might be misleading when you realize that generic skills are the kind of qualifications, besides your professional ones, that decide about your chances of getting a job as a student. Usually things like “what to do with a broken computer” or “how to cooperate in a team” are considered something a student has to learn somehow on its own and they are still just two examples of generic skills a future employer might expect from you. These rather hard facts on soft skills have led the colleagues from the AquaTNET-project to the idea of running a sector-wide survey on soft skills to identify gaps in current training and to improve skills provision for people like us (and all other students, graduates, teachers and employers). The idea of the survey is to find the most important soft skills for each of these groups and to make sure that this knowledge is used in teaching at our universities and high schools.

Please check the following websites (depending on your status) and take a couple of minutes to fill out the survey. Your input is very much appreciated!

If you are a student please go to this link:
http://www.esurveyspro.com/Survey.aspx?id=ea618ef0-e81b-4c3a-bff5-b2d1f22d7257

If you are a graduate (i.e. you recently completed a university degree) please go to this link:
http://www.esurveyspro.com/Survey.aspx?id=144616b4-36b8-427b-9ffb-1c2a1245e86d

If you are a teacher please go to this link:
http://www.esurveyspro.com/Survey.aspx?id=2e435a0d-1bf6-4ec5-b579-4b4be1c59dfb

If you are an employer please go to this link:
http://www.esurveyspro.com/Survey.aspx?id=bbc39675-42e2-488f-81a9-f88909ea9574

If you want to know more about the AquaTNET-project, please feel free to contact EAS-SG office (info@eassg.org) and we can help you out with some extra background information.

6. UPCOMING EVENTS

1. Second NACEE Conference of Young Researchers, Szarvas, Hungary, 30th-31st August 2010. Link.

2. COMBAFF II, Conference on Conservation & Management of Balkan Freshwater Fishes, Gödöllő, Hungary, 1st-3rd September 2010. Link.

3. ICES Annual Science Conference, Nantes, France, 20th-24th September 2010. Link.

4. Aquaculture Europe 2010 in Porto, Portugal, 5th-8th October 2010. Link.

An overview, what we consider relevant for students, can be found in the UPCOMING EVENTS section of our website.

On an international level upcoming events can be found at: http://www.conferencealerts.com/aqua.htm.

EAS-SG May Newsletter

MAY NEWSLETTER

This is the MAY - edition of the European Aquaculture Society Student Group (EAS-SG) Newsletter. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to all students and young people that might have the same interest in the work of the European Aquaculture Society Student Group (EAS-SG) like you do.

Yours sincerely,

Lena, Stefan, Anna, Guerrino and Benedikt

SUMMARY:

1. News about Aquaculture Europe 2010
2. Travel grants to AE2010 for EAS-SG members
3. Call for candidature
4. EAS-SG website updates
5. Aqua-TNET updates
6. Upcoming Events

1. News about Aquaculture Europe 2010

Student Workshop and Field Trip

“Aquaculture Europe 2010 – Seafarming tomorrow” is the title of the next EAS conference in Porto, Portugal from 5th to 8th October. We from the EAS-SG will grab the opportunity to offer a dedicated student program during the official program of this event. We would like to invite YOU and all other students and young aquaculturists to join us in Porto.

Our student workshop and forum program has a two-fold emphasis this year: Firstly, we would like to introduce our host-country Portugal from its aquaculture-perspective. Dr. António de Vilhena Sykes from CCMAR will give us an overview about the Portuguese efforts in On-, Near- and Off-shore aquaculture of “old” and “new” species. Secondly, we would like to offer you the opportunity to expand your portfolio of relevant soft-skills and qualifications. Dr. Catarina Martins from CCMAR will give a presentation on presentation-skills! During the latter half of the session, we will open the student forum, where workshop-participants can choose from a number of different info-boots to get informed and to chat about relevant topics.

When you prepare your travel-arrangements for AE2010 you should consider spending some more days in Porto to join our field trips. The EAS-SG and the EAS will organize several whole day excursions to different aquaculture-farms near Porto. As the actual dates of the trips are not settled yet, we suggest delay your booking and we will announce the dates as soon as possible.

2. Travel grants

Do you want to go to Aquaculture Europe 2010 in Porto? Do you need some financial support? We can help!

We, the EAS Student Group, offer a limited number of travel grants (200 € fixed amount) to support your expenses. You can apply, if the following requirements apply to you:

· You are a member of the EAS-Student Group (i.e. under the age of 30 and/or registered as a student)

· You are an EAS (individual or e-members) member.

Please send an application to our EAS-SG office (info@eassg.org) containing:

1. a letter of motivation

2. a short CV

3. a picture of yourself

You can apply for the grant, irrespective of your nationality, mother-language and if/or if not you intend to give an oral or poster presentation during the conference. The EAS-SG especially wants to support students and young people with limited financial funding possibilities to participate. If you do not receive any financial support for this trip, please state so in your application.

Deadline for submission is the 30th June 2010.

3. Call for candidature

The EAS Student Group Executive board and National Coordinators NEED YOU!

Like every year, we would like to open the candidature for the next EAS-SG executive board term 2010-11. When you have a look at our regulations (can be found on the website) you will see that the board gets elected annually by the student group members (YOU!). If you like to step into an active role in the EAS-SG and want to join the current team, hand in your candidature.

On the national level, we are working together with our National Coordinators. These EAS-SG members are our women and men “on the spot”. National coordinators have an important role in channeling information from the members to the trans-national level of the EAS-SG and vice versa. When you have a look at our website, you can see that we are still missing coordinators in some countries in Europe and we are always looking for contacts in overseas.

4. EAS-SG website update

“People, Places and Events“ and “Member-Lists” on www.eassg.org

New service for EAS-SG members

We have a new Service-Section for registered EAS-SG members on our website. Under "People, Places and Events" you can find three maps showing the actual location of all other EAS Student Group members and institutions and events from our domain.

We are developing this as a service-tool for you to improve orientation and mobility within Europe. Imagine next time when you plan a trip abroad, you might want to have a look at the maps to know what is going on in this very area.

If you want to have your personal details added to the list and if you know of any interesting places and events we should add, just let us know! info@eassg.org

We started a member-list with all registered EAS-SG community members. This list is only visible for registered users and shall help to visualize the community. You can add a couple of professional information on your profile and share your expertise with the community.

5. AquaTNET-services

Featuring the BibMail service

BibMail is a biweekly updated overview of the content tables of the major aquaculture-relevant scientific journals provided by the AquaTNET-project. Have a look at the (new) AquaTNET-website (to be introduced in one of the next newsletters) and find it under “Publications”. Here you will get a detail list of the latest publications in aquaculture, fisheries and aquatic resource management. PDF-reprints can be requested from the project-office.

6. UPCOMING EVENTS

· PISAqua 2010, Giornate tecnico-scientifiche di studio sull’acquacoltura, Pisa, Italy, 6th-7th May 2010. Link.

· Young marine scientists day, Hamburg, Germany, 20th June 2010. Link.

· Second NACEE Conference of Young Researchers, Szarves, Hungary, 30th-31st August 2010. Link.

· COMBAFF II, Conference on Conservation & Management of Balkan Freshwater Fishes, Gödöllő, Hungary, 1st-3rd September 2010. Link.

· ICES Annual Science Conference, Nantes, France, 20th-24th September 2010. Link.

· Aquaculture Europe 2010 in Porto, Portugal, 5th-8th October 2010. Link.

An overview can be found in the UPCOMING EVENTS section of our website.

Download this NEWSLETTER as PDF here.