More than 430 seafood professionals who attended the Global Aquaculture Alliance's GOAL 2015 conference at the Four Seasons in Vancouver, Canada, from Oct. 26 to 29.

GAA supports the development of the sector through organisation of annual GOAL meetings and through its GAA-Better Aquaculture practice scheme (BAP) offering certification of farmed seafood. Dave Little was in Vancouver as part of the schemes Standards Oversight Committee, which met on24-25th and then to participate in the GOAL meeting. The GOAL meeting was a packed 2.5 day programme in which a central and recurring theme  was ‘getting the message out’ that farmed seafood wasn’t only safe and delicious but increasingly part of the human landscape. All those involved need to embrace the positives  or as the chef convert to farmed seafood,  Barton Seaver told the conference   “The way we eat describes how this world is used,” he said. “But sustainability cannot be defined by the absence of negative impact.”

Anton Immink of Sustainable Fisheries Partnership and Matt Thompson of theNew England Aquaria, both IOA alumni are members of the GAA group developing a zonal management standard