The members of the Worldwide Sustainable Seafood Association recently went on an Aquaculture expedition to China. This expedition was scheduled between the 5th and 15th of June 2026. Henk Stander from the Aquaculture unit in the Department of Animal Science and a member of the association joined the rest of the group of 8 on the expedition.

The group met each other in Singapore at the World Aquaculture Society’s Aquaculture Conference. From Singapore they went to Beijing on the 5th from where they took a flight the next day to the city Qingdao in the Shandong province. The first visit in Qingdao was to a commercial sea cucumber farm from the Shandong Blue Ocean Company. This was quite a unique experience and Henk’s first visit to a sea cucumber farm. The next visit was to the Laizhou Mingo Aquaculture company (www.mingbo-aquatic.com) who produces 5 000 tons of marine finfish per annum at various locations and in diverse production systems. The newly constructed land based Recirculating Aquaculture System (RAS) farm was incredible to see according to Henk. The next stop was at a turbot farm producing approximately 1 500 tons per annum also in an RAS system. In the afternoon, a visit was conducted to the New Line Phage Banks (www.phagebanks.com) factory, a biotechnology company producing feed additives. The next day the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences was visited. This institute recently moved to a brand-new state-of-the-art modern campus. Very productive meetings were conducted in the morning and a visit to the Institutes museum was conducted in the afternoon. A visit to the Ocean University of China was conducted the next day. From Qingdao the group took a flight to Fuzhou in the Fujian province where they attended the 18th China International Seafood and Fisheries EXPO with an exhibition booth from the Worldwide Sustainable Sea Cucumber Association. Henk also attended the second Southeast Asian Nations Fisheries Cooperation 1-day Conference at the same venue the next day.