Co-Convenors: Katsuyuki Abo (Japan), Brett Dumbauld (U.S.A.) and Galina Gavrilova (Russia)

Invited Speaker:
Shuanling Dong (Ocean University of China, PR China)
Tomoko Sakami (Tohoku National Fisheries Research Institute, Japan)

Marine aquaculture is an important economic and social activity within PICES member countries. To ensure that development of aquaculture is environmentally and economically sustainable we need to: 1) improve our understanding of interactions between marine aquaculture and the environment (including wild stocks of plants and animals, 2) develop methods to study and/or predict such interactions, and 3) devise ways to reduce negative impacts on the environment. To this end the PICES Working Group on Environmental Interactions of Marine Aquaculture has begun to characterize the nature of these interactions with a focus on the benthic environment and aquatic animal health. To align with the activities, papers for this session are solicited in the following areas: 1) identification and characterization of marine aquaculture-environmental interactions; 2) development of tools to identify and study such interactions; and 3) social science research related to aquaculture interactions with the marine environment.