This year, our Conference coincides with the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. Over more than two weeks in the French capital, around 10,000 athletes will compete in 329 events in 32 different sports.
Our Conference is a little different. Over two days, just 250 of us will meet at the Grand Millennium Hotel in Auckland to share ideas, knowledge and latest news about the seafood industry. We do have an international element – several of our speakers are coming from offshore, to enlighten and entertain us – but you might think that other parallels with the pinnacle of sport were thin on the ground.
There is one comparison though, that we’d like to boldly make – champions.
We might not all be able to pole vault. Some of us can’t even sprint. But we can claim to be champions in our determination to contribute to a fishing sector that looks after the oceans. We want to be champions in the other sense of the word – champions for the oceans. We want to argue for their sustainable, appropriate use as a food basket for some of the healthiest food on the planet. That’s what led to our rather bold Conference theme this year.
And being champions of and for our oceans stretches to championing the people who work on them. Sometimes underappreciated, always hard working. Commercial fishers are out in all weather, they are not afraid of very early starts, they look after each other. If you’re not out on the water yourself and you’ve never seen a commercial fisher in action, we strongly recommend a viewing of this recent Country Calendar episode, featuring Zak Olsen and his crew on the Southern Cross.
Fishers like Zak (and there are hundreds like him) deserve our support and the support of New Zealand. We will be showcasing the work of our fishers at Conference as well as investigating recent technology developments and other innovations that can make life better across all aspects of fishing.
Many of the speakers we have presenting this year are true champions who will inform and inspire. We have champions for our environment, like Josh Donker of Motueka Nets. Josh, along with Rui Peng, Co-Founder of Critical, have found a way to recycle 98 percent of an expired trawl net into things like divider walls for offices.
We also have speakers who are champions of our quality seafood, including Umar Nguyen, otherwise known as ‘The Fish Girl’. Umar will be talking about her journey from chef to seafood guru – representing some of Australia's most prestigious seafood brands. If you’re not following ‘The Fish Girl’ on social media you should be.
Science is something we often talk about in The Update – if there was a gold medal for talking about science – we’d be frontrunners, if we do say so ourselves. That’s because science is critical to what we do – it’s used to inform the management of our fisheries and helps us to make decisions about the way we fish.
We have several champions of good science presenting to us at conference – including Team Leader Aquatic Design and Bioengineering, Louise Kregting, from Plant & Food. She will be telling us about their new Nelson-based Flume tank – how it works and what opportunities it provides for even better science in our industry. You can read a bit about this new Flume tank in the most recent issue of our Seafood New Zealand Magazine.
We could keep going on this topic of champions for a while. We have no shortage of them in our industry. We look forward to celebrating our champions in Auckland on August 7th and 8th – we hope you can join us.
There are just a few days left to register for the 2024 Seafood New Zealand conference. While it’s not quite the Olympics, we have created an event that we know will leave people inspired and excited. Inspired by the lengths our people are going to, to have as little impact on the environment as possible, inspired by the scientists who are helping us understand our oceans and how to do things in better ways, and excited for the future of our industry – a thriving fishing sector that looks after the ocean while contributing to the economy of our country and the wellbeing of local fishing communities across Aotearoa New Zealand.
