1 May 2015 opened the Universal Exhibition, Expo-2015, in Milan, kicking off a six-month global event dedicated to "Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life".
The theme for the event is one at the core FAO's Fisheries and Aquaculture mandate: how to guarantee healthy, safe and sufficient food to everyone, while respecting the natural resources of our planet. For this reason, FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture is pleased to be collaborating with Expo-2015 and UN Expo-2015 at various events through October.
We invite you to follow our upcoming events for May, either through news on our web site, through our live tweeting of events on our Twitter account @FAOfish, or by coming to see us in Venice and Milan.

ONU EXPO 2015 MAP (pdf)

FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture at Expo-2015 in May:

Friday, 8 May
FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture will participate at an interesting side event of the Milan Expo entitled AQUAE VENEZIA 2015, this side event to Expo-2015 is taking place in Venice and is dedicated exclusively to the theme of water. On 8 May, FAO Fisheries will participate in Pianeta Aqua - Green Drop. Stop by in the afternoon when Aquaculture officer Alessandro Lovatelli will speak at a round table on "Feeding the World: the Role of Oceans and Water Resources" or follow us on Twitter @FAOfish as we live tweet the event from Venice. Other participants in the roundtable will discuss renewable marine resources, sharks in the Adriatic Sea, and aquaculture, in what is certain to be an interesting discussion.

Friday, 22 May
FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture will participate in a European Commission - Maritime Affairs and Fisheries-sponsored event entitled Aquaculture in Europe: A model for the future.
Bringing together key actors such as producers, researchers, NGOs,  consumers, and popular chefs the event will look at how European aquaculture can help meet the ever growing demand for fish. It will showcase good practices from across Europe and then open up a discussion among the participants broken in small groups (World café) sitting in circle shape on the different challenges: environmental, economic and social as well as future prospects.
The event will include also a ceremony to announce the 3 winners among the 20 European schools that have participated in the pilot project of the "FARMED IN THE EU" campaign, in which students (12-18 old) have met local fish farmers and produced material to explain the sector in their regions. The aim of this project was to show the human face of a sector that is still unknown to many citizens: the 3 producers will be present to interact with students and teachers and to explain what they have learned together!

GFCM/FAO organized two working-group meetings in Marrakech, Morocco, on 20-24 April 2015, during which international experts discussed measures to deter IUU fishing, including the use of vessel monitoring systems (VMS).

GFCM press release

Nansis, the Survey Information System for logging, editing and analysis of biological and environmental data from marine fisheries research surveys, has undergone a series of improvements since 2006 when the first version for Window was released.
The software and the database which constitute the system are principally used to store and retrieve data for scientific or decision making purposes.
Throughout the years, several updates were made to optimize software stability and performances, based on suggestions provided by the user group of fisheries scientists.
From 27 to 31 October 2014, an early version 1.9 of Nansis was introduced and tested by a number of participants attending the Training of Trainers course on Nansis held at Casablanca, Morocco. The course, organized by the EAF-Nansen project, was to train scientist in the use of Nansis and in the meantime to test it. During the course, participants highlighted strengths and weaknesses of the software providing suggestions on suitable improvements.
Based on feedback received a new series of enhancements was planned and an updated version is now available as public release.
Nansis version 1.9 is meant to be a user-friendly tool with enhanced features. Indeed a wizard process easily lead users through a series of well-defined and simplified steps to successfully finalize the installation.
The version 1.9 of the software was officially released on 17 May 2015, on the occasion of the Norwegian national day, both on the EAF-Nansen project Nansis page and the Institute of Marine Research Website. On the webpages technical details on the software and download are also available.
We always strive to improve the quality and accuracy of Nansis. For this reason we warmly invite you to test version 1.9 of Nansis and provide us with your comments and suggestions at nansis@imr.no.
The Nansis software is shipped only with a dummy dataset to be installed. The software is compatible with the database already installed with many users and the datasets received from the surveys with Dr. Fridtjof Nansen, please refer to the help menu on how to import your data. To receive data from the Nansen program to use with the database please contact Inês Bernardes at CDCF using the data download form available from the web.

The SmartFish programme of the Indian Ocean Commission, through its Food security component implemented by FAO, supports the awareness program on rice-fish farming Fish NGO APDRA.

Press release