• A relatively new publication from the University of Florida, The Ornamental Fish TRade: An Introduction with Perspectives for Responsible Aquarium Fish Ownership.
• Why are those fish so sparkly? Some research on fish scales and silver spiders.
• Some News regarding fish vaccines: Vaccines could help what’s ailing fish, An Ich vaccine?
• Twenty-one nationalities on this year’s aquaculture MSc courses at Stirling. One of our Aquarium Science Program graduates, Kevin Erickson,  began his MSc program this fall in Aquatic Pathobiology at Stirling.
• Fierce debate opens up on GM salmon. (What do you think about genetically modified ornamental fish such as glofish and the new angelfish? THe creation of such fish does raise a number of potential ethical issues?)
• LSU Veterinary School professor receives award from the American Fisheries Society, Fish Health Section.
• Vertebrate Extinction crisis. Here’s the link to the actual article in Science. See the mention of the Japan meeting in the OFI section below.

From Ornamental Fish International:

CBD CONFERENCE IN JAPAN: Currently the 10th Conference of the parties of the Convention of Biological Diversity is taking place in Nagoya, Japan. OFI is represented at this conference, which is comparable with the CITES conference, by our colleague from OATA (Ornamental Aquatics TRade Association – UK) Keith Davenport. Hot topics for us at this conference are Access Benefit Sharing (ABS) and Invasive Alien Species (IAS). The first topic is about whether commercial users of animals and plants (breeders, traders) will have to pay the country from where the species originates. For instance Discus from Brazil, even though this species is captive bred all over the world. Should breeders in Malaysia, Taiwan or Germany pay a license fee to Brazil? The OFI position is that that they  want to avoid this for pets in general and ornamental fish in particular.