Welcome
Welcome to the Third International Symposium on Stock Enhancement and Sea Ranching website. The Symposium took place in Seattle, September 18-21, and was a great success.
Please check back as the website will be updated with presentations and additional materials for your use!
At a Glance
Many of the world's marine fisheries no longer yield the benefits they once did, due to over fishing and degradation of the supporting ecosystems. Governments are responding to the fisheries crisis by reducing fishing efforts and protecting fisheries habitats. However, fisheries managers are also asking whether the advances in aquaculture, that now enable juveniles of many species to be produced en masse, can be applied to speed up recovery of some stocks, or increase the production of others.
The First and Second International Symposiums on Stock Enhancement and Sea Ranching in Norway in 1997 and Japan in 2002 were instrumental in highlighting the technology and approaches needed to release hatchery-reared juveniles in a responsible way.
Our emerging field of science continues to face challenges in these areas. But other imperatives are arising too. We need decision tools to identify when to add hatchery releases to other forms of management to rebuild spawning biomass and overcome recruitment limitation; otherwise investments in cultured juveniles may be wasted. We also need to integrate biological research with the socio-economic needs of stakeholders to ensure that release programs succeed where they are deemed necessary.
The Third International Symposium will address these issues. It will also provide the opportunity to refine the technologies needed to achieve responsible practice, and identify how our discipline is contributing to a better understanding of the biological processes that underpin fisheries.
We invite you to join us in Seattle to help take this promising field of fisheries science to the next level.
