On June 26–27, the 64th Council Meeting of the Asian Fisheries Society (AFS) was held in Bogor, Indonesia. At the invitation of Professor Neil Loneragan, Chairman of the AFS, SHOU sent its representatives to the event, including Professor Yang Jinlong, Director of the Office of International Exchange, and Professor Liu Liping of the College of Fisheries and Life Science, who served as members of the 14th Council of the AFS; and Zhou Tingting, Deputy Director of the Office of Science and Technology, who attended the event as a life member of the AFS. After being nominated in writing by current AFS Chairman Professor Neil Loneragan, former Chairman Professor Alice Joan Ferrer, and Council member Professor Yang Jinlong, Professor Liu Liping was approved by the Council Meeting and elected as the Chairman-designate of the AFS. He will officially take office in 2025. This is also the third professor from SHOU to serve as the Chairman of the AFS, following Professors Yang Yi and Huang Shuolin.
Established in 1984, the AFS is composed of the Council, the Executive Committee, and the General Assembly, as well as branches such as the AFS Indian Branch, the AFS Japanese Branch, the Asian Fisheries Social Science Research Network Section (AFSSRN), the Fish Health Section, and the Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries Section (GAFs). It has also hosted a series of large-scale conferences, including the triennial Asian Fisheries and Aquaculture Forum, the International Symposium on Asian Cage Culture (CAA), and the Symposium on Diseases in Asian Aquaculture (DAA), etc. Currently, the AFS has nearly 1,000 members from over 30 countries and regions, mainly in Asia.
Meng Qingwen, Jia Jiansan, Tang Qisheng, Yang Yi, Zhou Yingqi, Huang Shuolin, Jiang Min, and others from the Chinese Mainland have successively served as members or Chairmen of the AFS. SHOU is one of the initiators of the AFS, and has always maintained a close and friendly cooperative relationship with it. Since the election of Professor Meng Qingwen as a member of the first council, many teachers of SHOU have been successively elected as council members for ten years, who added new impetus to our continuous promotion of the discipline construction of fisheries science and educational internationalization.
As a topic of this council, the preparatory meeting for the 7th International Symposium on Asian Cage Culture (CAA), which was convened by SHOU, was held concurrently. Our attendees also engaged in in-depth exchanges with the representatives of Bogor Agricultural University, Indonesia (a member unit of the “Asian Campus” program), the University of the Philippines in the Visayas, and the University of Putra Malaysia, hoping to further expand exchanges and strengthen cooperation in talent training, scientific research cooperation, and other aspects around our “Double First-class” and CEA construction.