AquaVision 2024: Addressing challenges and opportunities in the aquaculture sector

Hosted by Skretting, the 15th edition of Aquavision 2024 took place from 10-12 June in Stravanger, Norway

The event was attended by 450 participants from more than 50 countries who took home great memories of networking and inspiring presentations from a wide range of highly skilled speakers. Nutreco CEO, David Blakemore highlighted the company's role in feeding the world's rapidly growing population. The next speaker was UN Climate Change High-Level Champion for COP28, IUCN President, Gonzalo Muñoz, who dived into the topic of sustainability, concisely summarising the severity of this challenge.

World-renowned economist, professor Paul Krugman then presented a session on market disruptions and provided an overview of the state of current world economy. The next presentations were by Claudia Salem from Santa Priscila on innovation, Dag Sletmo from DNB Seafood and Mark Gallagher from F1. There were also useful insights from CEO of Marine Technologies, Dr Santhana Krishnan, and general manager of Nutreco China, Jason Yang. Both of them talked about India and China respectively, and it was interesting to hear their perspectives on the growth opportunities that lie in these markets. 

On Day 2, CEO of Iris.ai, Anita Schjøll Abildgaard spoke about artificial intelligence and the popularity that it has gathered over the years. She also talked about the issues and ethics around AI that the world is only starting to scratch the surface of. Lastly, she talked about what the executives in the aquaculture industry need to be looking out for, such as real-time video processing and fully autonomous devices.

During the session, the audience also got some brief glimpses into some of today's most revolutionary innovations, from Nutreco's Garden of the Future, to Aker BioMarine's fully autonomous drone that can catch krill in the Antarctica. As a tribute to the opening act by Stavanger-based visually impaired singer, Thomas Tvedt, Skretting's CEO, Bastiaan van Tilburg ended off the conference by playing a little tune on the piano.