I’ve been back from my trip to India and lsrael for a bit over two months  but until now winding down the quarter has kept me from posting about this trip.

I travelled to India to attend the Asia Pacific Aquaculture Conference held in Kochin. While there I gave three papers related to industry development and training. Perhaps I will provide more on that at a later date.

I had the opportunity to visit some fish farms in the beautiful backwaters of Kerala. These were primarily polyculture operations, rice and fish or rice and prawns. I then had the opportunity to travel with Mr. Krishna Dey and Dr.  Narayanan, two private consultants to the ornamental fish industry in India. Mr. Dey arranged for me to meet with representatives from the Kerala Ornamental Fish Farmers Association (KOFFA) and tour some of their facilities in the hills above Kochin. There are about 200 tropical fish farms in Kerala with a focus on many common freshwater ornamental fish and ornamental aquatic plants. There are also a number of native fishes that are collected in the wild or cultured. THese are being exported in low numbers or being developed for export. I hope to have a guest blog on this in the future. At this point most of the local production is going into the domestic market but the industry is working towards building its export capacity.

While touring these facilities Mr. Dey, Dr. Narayanan and myself had the opportunity to film a short educational video that will be released to the local association. The video followed an interview/discussion format between myself , Dr. Narayanan and Mr. Dey as we discussed emerging health issues and principles of health management at each of the facilities. This culminated in a group discussion between the three of us as well as Mr. Rajan Punnoose, Vice President of the KOFFA and Mr. Joy Joseph past president of the KOFFA. The setting was the  beautiful garden at Mr. Joy’s home and fish farm/hatchery. I hope to make the video available on this blog in the near future.

I’ve included some images from this trip. I hope you enjoy the tour. I’ll post some images and thoughts about the Israel leg in a few days.