Opening Ceremony & Opening Keynote Address

Abstract

Good morning, my dearest Asian Fishery Society friends, it is my greatest pleasure and alsomy first endeavor to deliver online the welcome remark for the 13th AFAF, Asian Fishery& Aquaculture Forum, conducted by National Cheng Kung University, Tainan and TaiwanBranch of AFS.Asia has been always playing the world most important roles in numerous sectors ofFishery. However, before the 80s no avenue and platform was available for Asian fisheryscientists to communicate and display their research results which are vital to thedevelopment of fishery industry.In May, 1983, 8 scholars held the preparatory meeting for the establishment of the AsianFisheries Society in Manila (a). In May 1984, the establishment of AFS was officiallyconfirmed at the University of the Philippines, Los Baños campus (b). In September 1985,first branch or chapter of AFS, Taiwan Branch, was established (c). In May 1986, threeyears after the preparatory meeting, the big gathering of Asian fishery communities for thefirst time, the 1st Asia Fishery Forum was eventually held, in Manila (d).Since then, 11 more fora and numerous topic-specific conferences, workshops, andseminars were held in various major cities in Asia. Besides the triennial forum, the othercore activity through the platform, AFS publication, has been always progressing.Since its establishment in 1985, Taiwan branch has been constantly making contributionto its parent body, including recruiting membership, raising fund for meetings and several issues of Asian Fisheries Science, holding conferences andpublishing meeting reports.Jointly supported by National Taiwan Ocean University,AFS, Taiwan Branch, Fishery Society of Taiwan and WorldAquaculture Society, Mullet and Its Aquaculture, the5th book edited by me and Dr. Edward Leano was finallypublished in March this year.Professor Liu Hsi-Chiang of National Taiwan University andI myself served as the 4th and 6th President of the board,respectively. In 2001, the 6th AFAF was held at NationalSun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Ms. Lu Hsiu-lien, Vice President of Taiwan, wasinvited to give a speech then and she can be the highest-ranking government official evergiving a speech in AFAF. The beautiful sunset scenery in NSYSU beach during the barbequedinner still lingers in participants’ memory.After another 20 years, AFAF returns to Taiwan for the second time as the 13th forum butfor the first time in a completely new format, online, due to the constrains of COVID-19.Although the pandemic obstructs your presence onsite, the Virtual Reality VR-high techcan bring you to me through the screen just even closer, face-to-face. Hi, everybody!In recent decades, the world has been changing at a much faster pace that we humanbeing can hardly keep up with. Global climate change leads to extreme weathers andnatural disasters. The pandemic of COVID-19 and its variants has caused millions of livesand hundreds billions of economic loss in two years that had never been encounteredin human history. Besides those two uncontrolled situations, recent war outbreak alsodeepens the threat on global food security. As one of the leading academic societies inaquafood producing sector, we AFS must even more efficiently carry out the inescapablemission in developing fishery technologies and disseminating them to the industry to fulfillaquafood security.My sincere wish that we have a successful online forum and a bountiful harvest of newknowledge from it. Let’s accumulate this time the ‘ONLINE’ experience, refine it, and applyit on small and large AFS conferences in years to come.Let’s have a successful online 13th AFAF.Thank you!