Paralells to Alaska Issues at World Fish Congress

Jay Barrett/KMXT
Long-time Alaska fisheries journalist Bob Tkacz recently attended the second annual World Congress of Mariculture and Fisheries in Hangzhou, China. The theme this year is “promoting sustainable fishery development.”
“The way these kind of events work here, the first one is usually kind of a dry run or dress rehearsal. You can go back on their web site and see last year’s was very small, so this was really the – even thought it was officially the second – it was really the international premier of this event.”
Tkacz said the World Congress was actually comprised of our different, concurrent conferences.
“One was on mariculture, one was on fishing, which included commercial fishing and seafood, but also recreational fishing. Another whole segment was on algae. Probably the longest track of the whole conference was on algae. And the fourth one was on maritime matters.”
He said one of the discussions was about how Indonesia was preparing its national oceans policy, which has parallels in Alaska:
“In Indonesia, they seem to think it’s a great idea, because it’s going to protect the marine biotech industry. Which is one of the things that Rep. Alan Austerman introduced a bill on, oh at the end of the session in May. It’s going to come up at next year’s session. The bill is to renew the new salmon or new seafood products tax credits. There’s a section in that bill that’s specifically addresses credits for biotech products. Those are things you make from what we now call the discards, the kind of left over parts fish products for meat and for food, that now go into fishmeal.”
KMXT had an extensive talk with Tkacz about the event, and we’ll have more on this week’s Alaska Fisheries Report.