This is the report of an inception workshop for the Mekong Giant Catfish Working Group. The Mekong giant catfish Pangasianodon gigas is listed as critically endangered in the 2003 IUCN Red List. The purpose of the workshop was to exchange information on the current state of the Mekong giant catfish and the relevant conservation and research activities of key organisations, and to establish a joint planning process aimed at developing an overarching conservation strategy for the Mekong giant catfish.

This is the report of the 3rd Regional Grouper Hatchery Production Training Course, which was conducted at the Brackishwater Aquaculture Development Center, Situbondo, East Java, Indonesia from April 18-May 8, 2005. There were a total of 17 participants coming from Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Singapore, and Vietnam. The training consisted of a  mixture of theory, practical and field trips for the participants.

This workshop report is an output from an additional uptake and promotion activity of the DFID NRSP Project R8363 “Enhancing Development Impact of Process Tools Piloted in Eastern India”, which was extended to the end of August 2005. It describes a Better-Practice Guidelines (BPG) Workshop which was the latest project activity to share process tools for Building Social Capital (Self-Help Groups), Consensus-Building and Information Access Surveys. Since the project began, the BPG genre has expanded from the original three concepts shared, to currently twenty-five BPGs prepared not only by STREAM but also by farmers and fish producers. The genre has also been adopted by other organisations, including the DFID-funded Western Orissa Rural Livelihoods Project to share rural aquaculture techniques, and Stirling University to support the uptake and promotion of their work on Self-Recruiting Species and Local Resource User Groups.

The workshop was attended by STREAM National Coordinators and Communications Hub Managers from Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, and STREAM Regional Office colleagues based in Thailand, Australia and India. The participants reviewed and assessed the BPGs and Policy Briefs in Bahasa Indonesia, Bengali, English, Hindi, Ilongo, Khmer, Myanmar, Nepali, Oriya, Sinhala, Urdu and Vietnamese. They also began to plan how the uptake and promotion of these tools may be specifically supported in each national context as well as planning the development of further BPG and PB topics.

In this issue:

Asian Development Bank study on aquaculture and poverty. The consequences of converting to organic shrimp farming. Recycling water and making money with Artemia. Advances in the seed production of cobia Rachycentron canadum in Vietnam. Australian success with barramundi cod Cromileptes altivelis. Recent grouper breeding developments in Thailand. Application of probiotics in rotifer production systems. Contract hatchery systems. Rainbow trout culture in Iran. Spotted babylon Babylonia areolata growout in earthern ponds.

This document is the technical proceedings of the Asia Regional Scoping Workshop on “Primary Aquatic Animal Health Care in Rural, Small-scale, Aquaculture Development,” held in Dhaka, Bangladesh from 27 - 30 September 1999. The objectives of the workshop were  to review information on socio-economic impacts, risks of disease incursions and health management strategies in rural, small-scale aquaculture and enhanced fisheries programmes; and to identify potential interventions for their better health management and appropriate followup actions.