Fisheries and aquaculture are confronted with continuing problems such as climate change, growing human populations, low income of small scale fishers and fish farmers, and competitive production and trading conditions. People should be confronting and discussing the challenges in order to come up with solutions on how we can respond; and the community should be resilient and adaptive in combatting the challenges. We cannot immediately solve some problems, such as overfishing, illegal fishing, depletion of marine resources, as they have deep root causes, but we are learning how to address them. Governments do their best to manage fishery resources to meet these challenges. Decision makers and the public also need to continually listen to new information so that they are equipped with knowledge for sustaining marine and aquaculture resources and protecting people who depend on them for nutrition, livelihood and business. Research is an important information gathering tool that contributes to policy and decision-making. The Asian Fisheries Society and its partners are taking a lead in making new information accessible through its platform AsiaPacific-FishWatch providing essential information on fish harvested or farmed for food in Asia-Pacific. I am pleased that AsiaPacific-FishWatch gives attention in its profiles and posts to the critical social, economic and market character of the value chains. The Asian Fisheries Society emphasises equally social and economic knowledge and biological, physical and technical knowledge.

Prof. Alice Joan G. Ferrer, PhD, President, Asian Fisheries Society