the interview Bill Daniels Dr William H. (Bill) Daniels, associate professor at Auburn University’s School of Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences, in Alabama, USA steps up from President-elect to President of the World Aquaculture Society (WAS) this month. He was pronounced President at the WAS’s first meeting of its new African Chapter in Cape Town, South Africa. Dr Daniels started his career in aquaculture in 1978 when he joined the US Peace Corps program, run by the United States government, as a volunteer in the area of aquaculture development; the stated mission of the Peace Corps includes providing technical assistance, helping people outside the US to understand American culture and helping Americans to understand the cultures of other countries. Each program participant is an American citizen, typically with a college degree, who works abroad for a period of at least two years after three months training. Following three years in Africa, Dr Daniels returned to Texas A&M University to complete his Masters and then Mississippi State University for his PhD. He then worked at Delaware State University from 1994 through 2002 and has since worked at Auburn University. His focus on US aquaculture started in earnest in 1984 and he has spent the last 33 years developing his aquaculture interests.
How did you become involved in US Peace Corps work in the first place?
When I applied to the US Peace Corps, they sent me a couple of different offers and one of those was to teach aquaculture in the Congo (Zaïre) in Africa. In the back of my mind I thought for some reason that that was a really great idea, yet I’d never seen aquaculture at that time. But after having worked in the US Peace Corps for three years, I decided that I really wanted to come back to the US and learn how to do it in a much more processional way instead of a low-tech way.
What were some of the challenges you faced in the Congo in terms of establishing aquaculture?
Basically, I was placed out in a village where there was very little aquaculture at the time and very little technical knowledge. So I began to work with local communities and meeting with farmers who were interested and then focusing them more on construction and pond management. It was a situation where you had to grow the industry from scratch. And that proved to be a long difficult time but at the end of two years I had 10 farmers who had built ponds and who had not seen many harvests. However, at the end of three years we had 40 farmers who all had ponds. It was a snow-balling effect once people could see the amount of fish and income they could generate from aquaculture.
Did that encourage you to go into educational activities when you came back to the US? Why didn’t you end up in industry?
I wanted to learn more and the more I learnt the more I was interested in doing research and then getting back into international work and try to build aquaculture in numerous countries around the world.
Do you see that through WAS and your new position as President of WAS, that you can further your interest in helping people?
This is one of the reasons in going to Africa. I have for a long time been trying to generate enough interest in Africa to develop an African Chapter of WAS and this is a great opportunity for the industry to put the spotlight on Africa, but not only for Africa but for the rest of the world as well, to see the potential that aquaculture has in Africa.
Do you see one of the tasks of this meeting in Cape Town to bring the technology that we have developed in western countries to Africa and to show Africans through both an exhibition and WAS conference, that more technology is beneficial to their development?
Well, we look at the conferences as a two-way street: that we can learn what’s going on in Africa and what the needs are in Africa and what kind of technology that will work best here and then sharing their knowledge from working in the field all these years so that we can learn best how to assist in technical development.
Do you see aquaculture as a global community? Do you see your role as President of WAS furthering that community?
Yes, I do. I mean we really want to bring more Africans into that global community for the cross-sharing of knowledge.
Is there one specific thing you’d like to achieve during your presidency?
To see the establishment of this new African Chapter of WAS for aquaculture in Africa.
What drove you in that direction?
I have a little bit of a passion for helping people and aquaculture seemed a good way to do that and out there you could see a much greater benefit by helping people grow aquaculture for food rather than growing aquaculture for money. To me, that was a much better thing to be doing to help people to help themselves.
62 | May 2017 - International Aquafeed