Beyond 2020

Many things have been said about 2020, it has certainly been an unusual and unexpected year. The world in which we live now is different from the one we were used to before, and it seems unwise to attempt any predictions about the future. The aquaculture sector, as with almost all human activities, has been affected by COVID-19, but it still maintains a pivotal role in supporting the production of nourishing, nutritious and tasty food for humanity. Market changes and logistic issues are now having greater impacts on the sector, which is still progressing towards the goal of achieving a true environmental sustainability, economic viability and social responsibility. In parallel, within our Journal, some important and unexpected changes have happened. First, the sad departure of Prof Sena De Silva, co-founder of the Journal and Editor in Chief, who died in May 2020; and then the communication from Albert Tacon about his decision to leave his role as Editor in Chief for the journal. The contribution of Albert to Reviews in Aquaculture has been immense and we, the authors of this editorial and the two new Editors in Chief, feel humbled and somewhat anxious, as we have very large shoes to fill. Thanks Albert, we truly wish you all the best with your future endeavours (and we now also hope to see some of your future publications being submitted for consideration to our Journal, too). The journal will further change form next year, with the inclusion of new format articles for publication. These will include ‘Letters’ and ‘Opinions’, and the attribution of an honorary title as a ‘Sena De Silva Paper’ for articles considered shining for either (i) novelty and originality, (ii) likelihood of direct positive impacts for the aquaculture sector or (iii) overall quality of scientific reasonings coupled with real-world applicability. No more than one Sena De Silva Paper title will be awarded and published per printed issue, and these articles will be made free to access, at no cost to the authors. In this issue, we are presenting 35 new review papers spanning a variety of disciplines and topics of relevance to the aquaculture sector, including nutrition, environment interactions, health and genetic considerations, and dealing with a variety of organisms, from microalgae to shrimp, from urchins to finish. As a snapshot example of what can be found in this issue, we would like to introduce three papers, on three different and highly interesting topics. Coastal benthic ecosystems, which are frequently subject to tidal impacts, have been explored extensively by human beings for aquaculture activities. In their review article, Lacoste et al. (2020) summarized the observed ecological interactions between shellfish aquaculture and the environment and proposed a series of new directions, using a Biodiversity-Ecosystem Functioning (BEF) approach. The authors suggest that the use of BEF will facilitate the study of aquaculture and environment interactions, which may then shed new light on the management and sustainable development of aquaculture in coastal areas. A different, and as well important, area of research in aquaculture is relative to on-farm animal welfare. This is a significant topic which is attracting increasing public attention, consequently shaping policies and markets forces. Compared to other animal farming sectors, welfare issues in aquaculture have so far only received localized attention. However, the global aquaculture industry will inevitably face these challenges to a much greater extent in the near future, as the concerns over farmed animal welfare rise across all continents. The review article written by Gismervik et al. (2020) places a focus on fish welfare issues in the aquaculture industry, providing a number of good parallel examples from the on-farm welfare issues encountered in poultry production in Norway. The lessons learned from other animal farming sectors, and the reasonings provided in this Norwegian aquaculture focused study, could be a useful contribution to the growing scientific debate and knowledge acquisition on fish welfare in aquaculture, for all countries across the multitude of cultured species and farming methods. Zooming in, from macro topics such as ecosystem prosperity and animal welfare to intracellular mechanisms, the third article introduced in this editorial focused on a highly timely topic, microRNA. MicroRNA is a group of small, 18to 28-nucleotide-long, non-coding RNA, which plays important roles in post-transcriptional regulation of protein expression, and their involvement has been demonstrated in normal and in pathological processes. In the review article authored by Chu and Xu (2020), the current knowledge on miRNA which interacts with pattern recognition receptors, including Toll-like receptors, RIG-I-like receptors and Nod-like receptors, and molecules in their respective signalling pathways in teleost fish are analysed and presented, with a very useful schematic overview of their interactions (Figure 1 in the article). This article helps to consolidate the current knowledge on the important roles of miRNA in regulating innate immune responses in fish and may serve as a platform to explore, and to further understand, the immune function of miRNA in fish, and hopefully their possible application in the aquaculture industry. We hope that you enjoy this new issue of Reviews in Aquaculture.