8^th International conference on Fisheries & Aquaculture October 02-04, 2017 Toronto, Canada

Mario Barletta is an Associate Professor at Oceanography Department of Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE), in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. He is responsible for the lecturing of disciplines as Marine Nekton and Ecology of Estuarine Ecosystems at both Under-graduation and Post-graduation levels. He is registered as Master’s and Doctorate Supervisor at the Oceanography Post-Graduation Program (UFPE), and at the Ecology Post-Graduation Program at Nacional University of Colombia (Medellin). Research interests are on estuarine and coastal ecology, experimental design for hypothesis testing and data handling for ecological studies and pollution on marine wildlife. Since 2015, he is an Associate Editor of Frontiers Environmental Science/Marine Science (specialty section of Frontiers in Marine Ecology and Marine Pollution and Environmental Conservation) (Nature Publishing Group - www.frontiers.org).

Changes in the environment and in the composition of fish assemblages in the Paranaguá Estuary (South Brazil) were assessed by comparisons made before, during and after dredging operations, in the same months and areas studied in the previous year. Interactions between year and month were observed for salinity. During the dredging year, fish total density was 2 individuals m−2 and with a total biomass of 104 gm−2 (among 31 species captured). For the same period the year before, 0·3 individuals m−2 and 3 gm−2 were captured (38 species). The number of species showed significant time v. month interactions, if fish species composition varied for both year and month. Total mean density and biomass showed significant differences for interaction time v. month, and density and biomass in the dredging month September 2001 in the main channel were scientifically different from other months. Interaction times v. area were significant for Cathorops spixii (increased biomass), Aspistorl uniscutis (increased density), Menticirrhus americanus (decreased biomass) and Cynoscion leiarchus (decreased density and biomass). This suggests that during the dredging process there is a change in the structure of the demersal fish assemblage. The impact (damage and mortality) induced by dredging on the macrobenthic animals along the dredge path attracted adults of C. spixii that reached densities 10 times greater than in the year before. On the other hand, sciaenid species practically disappeared. To contribute to the conservation of the estuarine fish fauna, and maintain fisheries production of the Paranaguá Estuary and surrounding areas, it is recommended that, dredging should be done from the late rainy season to the early dry season. Decisions must consider the ecological cycles of socio-economically important fish species and prioritize the safe disposal of dredged.

Johnathan Szeliga is a graduate student at the University of Guelph working on his master’s thesis in Animal Nutrition in Dr. Dominique Bureau’s Fish Nutrition Lab. As part of his thesis he has joined Dr. Wael Ahmed’s Research Team from the University of Guelph’s School of Engineering that is working on improving the energy efficiency in aquaculture through the testing and implementation of the novel airlift design. His focus on the project will be assessing the pump’s ability to maintain ideal water quality conditions for rainbow trout through oxygenation, carbon dioxide stripping and waste removal through water flow.

One of the major operating costs in recirculating aquaculture systems is the energy cost needed to operate centrifugal pumps in such systems. Due to the economic and environmental impact of maintaining high-power usage of this equipment, energy saving technologies in aquaculture operations will significantly impact both the profitability and sustainability of the business. Therefore, a novel airlift pump design was developed in order to reduce power consumption in these facilities. The new technology offers a sustainable solution for aquaculture systems. This will be achieved by using airlift pumps for simultaneous water circulation and aeration in these systems. The new design of airlift pumps will significantly improve the system efficiency and consequently reduces the total energy consumption in aquaculture systems compared to systems operating by conventional pumps. In order to test the applicability of the novel airlift, experiments were carried out in the field at commercial aquaculture sites to evaluate their operational performance. Air is supplied by an air compressor (a) into a line which gets split two ways between an airline feeding the radial mode of injection (b) and the axial mode of injection (c). The endings of these lines lead into compartments in the pump (d) which allow for different gas bubble sizes to be formed. The arrows depict the movement of water in and out of the pump. The frame for suspending the pump in the water has not been depicted as that part of the design varies for each testing site. The trial locations include: circular flow-through tanks, floating pond raceways, and indoor recirculating systems. Parameters being measured in these systems include: flow, velocity, and oxygenation; with future trials to include potential of carbon dioxide stripping and flow effect on removal of ammonia. So far, velocity and aeration tests have been performed at the flow-through circular tank, as well as water flow readings at raceways. When comparing velocity readings of the circular fish tank using the novel airlifts to the aeration/water dispersion system already in use at the farm, the new pumps provide equivalent or better velocity readings, with much more energy savings. Water oxygenation was also found to be slightly better when comparing the present technology and the conventional methods used by the farms. Also, Initial water flow readings are slightly underperforming the performance curves modeled in the lab for 4” diameter pipe airlifts, yet are over performing ones for the 6” diameter airlifts. In conclusion, the initial tests show significant potential for using the present airlift design over conventional systems that are currently used in fish production. However, there are still further studies that are needed in order to fully compare airlift pumps to centrifugal pumps in terms of total energy efficiency in aquaculture.

Formanyi Anthonia Nzemu holds the Cameroon GCE Ordinary and Advanced level certificates in sciences and later enrolled in the National Centre for Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Training where she acquired a Brevet de Technicien in Aquaculture. Being mature in age, enthusiastic and ambitious, she has built up an interest on forging through a sustainable future via my profession. She has been following up his training for the last 10 years with great perception and a lot of research work at various levels of her career. She intends to further my career by taking on a specialist domain in Canada or America which has the best educational facilities in the world.

The pathogenic microflora of three anatomical sites (skin, gills and intestine) of fifty (50) fishes belonging to twenty-one genera, as well as water samples collected from Limbe and Tiko beaches were analyzed, using standard methods. The susceptibility pattern of the bacterial isolated to some commonly prescribed antibiotics was also investigated by the Kirby-Bauer method. A total of 275 bacterial isolates, all belonging to the family Enterobacteriaceae, were obtained. Eleven bacteria species were indentified: Esherichia coli type 1, citrobacter freundii, Enterobacter cloacae, Serratia marcescens, serratia odorifera, Hafnia alvei, Proteus vulgaris, Proteus penneri, klebsiella preumoniae, klebsiella oxytoca, klebsiella ozaenae. These organisms are either true pathogens or potential ones. Both fish and water samples were contaminated with these bacteria species. The specimens from the Limbe estuary were more contaminated (61.4&) than the specimens from Tiko creek (38.6%). Also the specimens from Limbe estuary had a higher bacteria load (58.8%) than Tiko creek (41.2%). Ranking the contamination of fish anatomical sites, it was observed that the skin was the most contaminated site while the gills were least contaminated. Gprofloxacin and ofloxacin were the most effective drugs against the isolates as all isolates exhibited 100% sensitivity to these drugs. Isolated were 100% resistant to imepenam compared to Ampicillin (60.4&). Our study has adduced that fish are sources of human pathogenic bacteria; hence fish from these areas must be adequately prepared before consumption.

Muhammad Ishaq is presently the Director of Science organization. He has completed his MS in Chemistry and Zoology from Research based Institute of Pakistan. He is the Member of National Academy of Young Scientists (NAYS), Pakistan. As a Chemist and Zoologist, he has shown active contribution in the field of science. He has participated in different workshops and seminars related to different fields. He has got a deep insight into Advanced Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Environmental Chemistry, Zoology and Experimental Statistics. Recently he has completed research on persistent organic pollutants in the river Swat “districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan”. Furthermore he is very much interested to attend conferences and seminars on international level where he would create new ideas and discuss it with scientific communities to make it beneficial for the living organisms in near future.

Freshwater aquatic organisms can be exposed to hundreds of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) discharged through natural and anthropogenic activities. Given our limited resources, it is necessary to identify, from the existing evidence, which is the greatest threat so that control measures can be targeted wisely. The focus of this study was to rank POPs according to the relative risk they represent for the aquatic organisms in rivers in the Swat Region, Pakistan. A list of 13 POPs was compiled based on the available data regarding their presence in these rivers and ecotoxicological data. Those that were widely detected were benzo [a] pyrene, p,p'-DDE, p,p'-DDT, fluoranthene, heptachlor, hexabromocyclododecane, hexachlorobenzene, α-hexachlorocyclohexane, γ-hexachlorocyclohexane, naphthalene, perfluorooctanoic acid, perfluorooctane sulfonate and phenanthrene. Effect concentrations were compiled for Pakistani relevant and standard test species and compared with river aqueous concentrations. Only bed-sediment concentrations were available so that water levels could be calculated based on the known local sediment organic carbon concentration and the Koc. The POPs were ranked, based on the ratio between the median river and median effect concentrations. Of the POPs studied, fluoranthene was ranked as the highest threat, followed by phenanthrene, naphthalene and p,p'-DDE. The risk from p,p'-DDE may be magnified due to being highly bio-accumulative. However, the greatest overlap between river concentrations and effect levels was for lindane. Overall, fish was the most sensitive species group to the risks from POPs. Hotspots with the highest concentrations and hence risk were mainly associated with watercourses draining in Mingora, the biggest city in the Swat region.

Katrina L Canon is a faculty of Bicol University Tabaco Campus, Tayhi Tabaco City, Albay, Philippines. She has been teaching chemistry tool courses and foundation courses in the Education, Fisheries and Food Technology Departments. She has been into food security and environmental science research and extension activities. She has been more into developing materials for information dissemination for various stakeholders or target audience. Not only that the results of research or extension activities are disseminated, she has been looking forward to see actions taken by the target audience in response to the information they have acquired.

Statement of the Problem: Presence of contaminants in water is an important issue in the rural coastal areas. Island communities like Sagurong, San Miguel Island having no water treatment facilities and generally release effluents to different bodies of water. Given that the area has a marine protected area it will be a drawback on the overall objective of increasing the biomass of aquatic flora and fauna. More so, this study has evaluated the presence of surfactants and Pb in the area for information dissemination and possible action by the resident.

Methodology & Theoretical Orientation: The socio-economic profile of Sagurong has been updated through the use of a validated researcher-made instrument which was used as a guide during interview. Using purposive sampling method, water and bivalve samples were collected from the identified sites during May and August, 2016 for AAS and MBAS.

Findings: Analysis indicated that water samples from upstream (0.64mg/L) and sites 4 (0.527mg/L) and 5 (0.015mg/L) exceeded the 0.01mg/L MRL for Pb per DAO No. 2016-08 for Class SA waters. However during the wet month (August, 2016), water samples collected from MPA sites (0.748 mg/L; 0.722 mg/L) were found to exceed the MRLs. But bivalves samples collected during the wet and dry months have also exceeded the 1.5 mg/kg MRLs set by EU, 2010. On the other hand, surfactant levels in both water and bivalve samples were beyond the MRLs of DAO 2016-08.

Sonia K Mumbah has experience in monitoring of fisheries resources, through BMU management issues, in inspecting fish and fish handling facilities at fish landing site and markets and experience in fish identification, data collection and interpretation. Her expertise in fisheries management and passion in improving the status on the marine resources and the stakeholder has increased the knowledge and understand of a healthy ocean to the community.

In recent years, additional but potentially harmful fishing gears have penetrated into the artisanal fisheries in Kenya, posing great management challenges. The continued use of spears in fishing, despite their discouraged use due to perceived environmental and societal negative impact, has raised a lot of concern and debate in the Kenyan artisanal marine and coastal fisheries sub-sector. The impacts of spearfishing in terms of catch composition, diversity and size-frequency in Vanga and Msambweni, South Coast of Kenya were obtained in this study. Both in Vanga and Msambweni spearfishing is highly done especially by young fishermen during low tides. Two months data collection (October and December) in 2012 on fish catch composition reveals significant differences between fish captured by spear gun and other most used gears in both sites. The difference in fish composition was attributed to more abundant families and species captured by spear gun compared to Malema, Hook and line and Gillnet. Diversity by species richness for fish was significantly higher under the usage of a spear gun. In addition, significant higher Shannon-Wiener diversity index lower dominance was observed for the fish captured by the spear gun than for those captured by the other gears. The size distribution of fish captured by spear gun was large; all sizes all fish were captured by the spear gun regardless of the species (11 cm to 30 cm). The impact of spear fishing resulted in higher abundance of Lutjanus fulviflamma in Vanga and Octopus macropus in Msambweni.