Record attendance for online sealice conference
A record number of Sea Lice Conference participants attended last week’s Sealice Online event, with 1,200 individual logins registered.
The conference, held in two-hour sessions over three days, was hosted by Faroe Islands aquaculture research organisation Fiskaaling.
Participants represented a broad array of professional and institutional backgrounds:
- Fish farming 13%
- Other private enterprise (other than fish farming) 25%
- Public institution or authority 5%
- Educational institution, researcher 25%
- Government 16%
- Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) 4%
- Student 3%
- Other 8%.
“There are clearly a wide number of different stakeholders in the aquaculture industry, and in the scientific community, dealing with various aspects of the biological challenges involved, such as sea lice,” said Fiskaaling.
20 presentations
The Sea Lice Online Conference 2021 had 14 scientific sea lice presentations, an overview of current global trends, and five sponsored presentations.
“The poll tells us that between 88% and 90% of the audience say the topics were of either high or very high relevance. Also, between 86% and 92% of the audience described the academic level of the presentations to be either high or very high,” said Fiskaaling on the website for Sealice International Conference 2022, which is being held in the Faroes.
“The organisers at Fiskaaling and the committee are very pleased to have provided the scientific community and the industry with an opportunity to meet, present and discuss topics and issues of significant importance and relevance. It is certainly a positive indicator for the 13th Sea Lice International Conference in May 2022.”
Recurring online event
Fiskaaling added that poll answers indicate that 72% think that there is definitely a need for a recurring Sea Lice Online Conference, while 16% think there is a need for this. Only 3% said there was no need, or little need for a recurring conference.
“At the moment there are no such plans, but the poll result clearly provides the organising committee with a clear indication that participants favour this option. The issue has not been debated yet, so there will be no new announcements made until this has happened.”
Recordings of last week’s conference will be made available on You Tube in the near future.
