Jakiul MD Islam

At­ten­ding the Aquaculture America 2020, the lar­gest American aquaculture con­fe­rence, was a great experience on the scientific and personal level. The conference is one of the largest gathering in the field of aquaculture, offered an excellent opportunity to present my results and to get in contact with other scientists. From 9 to 12 February 2020, around 20,000 scientists came to Hawaii Convention Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA presented their works. The conference was quite a big task as there more than 60 sessions discussed on various topics of aquaculture from “Nutrition”, over “Culture and Management” to “Climate Change Impacts on Aquaculture”. In most sessions, I didn’t even grasp how huge it was. All events were enormous. In this meeting, I had the opportunity to attend a variety of interesting sessions relevant to my research, specifically on climate change-induced environmental impacts on fish and climate-smart aquaculture feed formulation. I was astonished about the recent researches on aquaculture especially the application of proteomics and metabolomics for environmentally friendly sustainable fish production. I got fascinated by Professor David C. Little, UK, and Christopher Monson, University of Washington, USA. Their presentations were exceedingly tremendous and full of scientific excitement for me.

In the form of a poster, I presented our research entitled “Metabolic and molecular stress responses of European seabass, Dicentrarchus labrax at low and high temperature extremes” in the well matching session “Fish Physiology”. It was an amazing experience for me that I had to face scientific questions from renowned scientists from all around the world and there were also some recommendations for my research. It was much easier to contact people I have never seen before. Many people I met there are fellow PhD students, who explained their work at a basic level. This ses­si­on has helped me va­luable in­sights to the most up to date work about fish physiology and climate change impacts on aquaculture. From the high­ly at­ten­ded pos­ter ses­si­on, I had very fruit­ful discussions about our pre­sented work, got use­ful feed­back, new per­spec­tives/directions for our on­go­ing re­se­arch, and of course opened some pos­si­ble future col­la­bo­ra­ti­ons. I would like to recom­mend it to all other students who have the pos­si­bi­li­ty. I have sha­red my research work with other peers and got nice insightful feed­back. I had the opportunity to meet new peop­le and re­con­nec­ted with peop­le I met be­fo­re. I feel in­spi­red to con­ti­nue working on my re­se­arch. Besides the conference sessions, I attended the trade show exhibition arranged by the same organizer. I got more insight into the latest technological development for the aquaculture and fisheries sector.

In last day of the conference, I got a certificate of attendance from the organizer. I passed extreme quality time with the humble scientific community at this conference and I always felt that we had to improve in many more things. I am grateful to GLOMAR for financial support to attend this conference. I would also like to thank my supervisors to allow having such an impactful experience with the scientific endeavour that would be a long-cherished inspiration for me in the future towards a scientific career.