Second HIGH-PERFORMANCE WORKSHOP

Eva García Muntión, action chair, and Anna Toffan as local organizer conducted the opening ceremony, welcoming all attendees and announcing the agenda for the Workshop. Greeting of the IZSVe management were also brought by Dr Arcangeli Giuseppe, head of the Italian Reference Laboratory for fish, mollusk and crustacean disease hosted by IZSVe. He introduced activities of IZSVe in the aquatic
environment underling the important challenges that aquacultures is currently facing due to climate change and pollution. The first speaker was Dr Duncan Colquhoun as “keynote speaker” invited to give a review of lessons learned from the reduction of the antibiotics use in marine aquaculture in Norway.
An active discussion about the use of antibiotics in aquaculture followed this inspiring presentation. Then 9 more presentations selected by the Program Committee amongst the proposers during the “call for speakers” previously launched were presented. Speeches were divided according to the topic in three sections (2 during the morning and 1 in the afternoon).
The first block of presentation was chaired by Dr Rajat Nag (WG 3 Leader and member of WG 4) and consisted with two presentations entitled “Marine Aquarium Animal Welfare: Identifying Problems and Implementing Solutions” by Deniz İnnal and “Financial Instruments for Risk Management in Marine Aquaculture under Climate Change Scenarios” by Besa Shahini. The first topic presented was about ongoing activities in Turkey on welfare monitoring of fish reared in public aquarium. All participants were invited to join some of the activities since the project is still ongoing and it needs more facilities.
The second talk was devoted to present the different financial instrument available to support fish farmer and aquaculture enterprises. Blue bonds were explained with practical examples of countries where this instrument was used successfully. An interesting discussion about how to deal with insurance companies followed.
The second block of presentation was chaired by Hilal Ay (WG1 leader, WG2 and 3 member) and consisted of 3 presentation grouped under the topic “Increasing sustainability of marine aquaculture and ecosystems”. One presentation was withdrawn due to the absence of the speaker. Dr Meryem Yeşim Çelik presented the advantages of farming mussels with a talk entitled “Climate-Friendly Food Production with Mussel Farming” and Dr Yusuf Bozkurt introduced “the Role of Cryopreservation in Ex-Situ Conservation of Marine Aquatic Organisms for Sustainable Aquaculture “as an interesting and useful alternative to maintain and store genetic material for valuable fish broodstock.
The third block of presentation was chaired by Anna Toffan (MC and WG 1 member) and grouped all the speeches dealing with fish diseases. Dr. Danny Morick presented the ongoing “Monitoring Fish Bacterial Pathogens of Wild Fish Species From the eastern Mediterranean and the South China Sea” his group is performing with particular result of bacterial population identified by NGS in gills from ifferent fish population (native vs invasive species). Dr. Hilal Ay presented on behalf of Izzet Burcin Saticioglu the results of their analysis on the Mucilage invasion the Marmara Sea faced in the last years with particular emphasis on the role that mucilage can have as zoonotic bacterial carrier. Mucilage is
an emerging issue linked to eutrophication and global warming and an increased incidence has been forecasted. Dr. Simona Bartkova presented the principle of functioning of a laboratory assay based on droplet emulsion coupled with fluorescent based label-free (bright field) analysis which allow to effectively study viability, aggregation, and biofilm formation of bacteria with a rapid and user friendly turnover. Practical examples of application were also provided. The methods resulted particularly interesting to the audience with several question on technical aspects and pros and cons of the methods.
Finally, Dr Martina Fiabane presented her doctoral research project on the development of small molecules that specifically bind and stabilize DNA G4 structures potentially inhibiting vital processes of bacterial pathogens. The protocol described was successfully applied to two Pseudomonas aeruginosa G4-structures and two Klebsiella pneumoniae G4-structures, demonstrating excellent results in terms
of effectiveness and reliability.
To conclude the day, Dr Francesca Bertolini provided a nice overview of the ongoing COST project EU-LI-PHE COST “Precision Phenotyping in Marine Research: Opportunities from the EU-LI-PHE Network”. EU-LI-PHE aim to create a Europe-centered multidisciplinary, interconnected and inclusive community of experts that will enhance scientific collaboration, catalyze developments, and transfer livestock phenomics concepts and applications to improve the sustainability and competitiveness of the European livestock production sector. She encouraged all BIOAQUA members to join this COST since all the data already gathered or which are going to be collect actually can be considered parts of the “phenomics” they are looking for. She also promoted the training activities that EU-LI-PHE COST offers.
Finally, Mr Theo Zakaris, from the Greek Scientists Society, anticipated the activity scheduled for the day after describing the online workshop being organized on how to chart sustainability plans. The workshop will happen by the end of May or beginning of June. All the presentation are available in the shared repository of the BIOAQUA project.

Opening and Initial Presentations: Eva García Muntión inaugurated the workshop, setting the tone for a series of insightful presentations. The first session, chaired by Francesco Pascoli and Rajat Nag, delved into “Risks for Fish and Aquaculture,” highlighting the need for microbial and chemical risk assessments in aquaculture. This was followed by Izzet Burcin Saticioglu’s review of bacterial disease outbreaks in rainbow trout.

Innovative Treatments: The second block, led by Stojmir Stojanovski, covered “New Treatments for Fish Health.” Noteworthy talks included Öznur Diler’s research on essential oil nanoemulsions with antibacterial properties and Andrea Marsella’s discussion on the critical role of vaccination in fish aquaculture. Orkid Coskuner-Weber concluded the session with a compelling presentation on the application of computational approaches and big data analytics in improving fisheries and aquaculture.

Technical Tours and Collaborative Activities: Participants toured the state-of-the-art CICYTEX-INTAEX laboratories, witnessing firsthand the institute’s innovative work in food product transformation and aquaculture research. The day ended with a collaborative “Delphi Analysis” session to enhance knowledge of biomolecular solutions for aquaculture.