The chief executives of the research institutes IMARES, Wageningen and the Norwegian SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 6 November which relates to the synergy between both organisations in the field of research for utilization of marine resources.
Photo: IMARES’ Managing Director, Martin Scholten, and SINTEF Fisheries and Aquacuture’s President, Karl Andreas Almås, sign the MoU.
The MoU was signed during the Fisheries Innovations Conference which took place in Rotterdam November 6-7. The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality took the initiative to organise the Conference to offer North Sea fishers an opportunity to present their innovations and discuss them with policy-makers and researchers from the countries bordering the North Sea.
SINTEF and IMARES will work together on the development of projects in the fields of sustainable aquaculture and fisheries, fishing techniques and ecosystems/environmental research.
SINTEF has an excellent reputation in technology and aquaculture, and maintains very close contacts with the business community. IMARES possesses a great deal of ecological knowledge about the marine environment. The partners are linking these qualities with the intention of giving an impetus to the sustainable operation of the North Sea.
IMARES is the national institute for strategic and applied ecological marine research, focusing on sustainable protection, harvesting and use of sea and coastal areas (Marine Living Resource Management). The central themes are ecology, nature, environment, fisheries, aquaculture and other uses of the sea, coast and river areas. IMARES, an internationally-renowned institute active in the fields of aquaculture, ecology, environment and fisheries, is part of the Wageningen UR organisation and has a staff of 200.
SINTEF (Norwegian: Stiftelsen for industriell og teknisk forskning), headquartered in Trondheim, Norway, is the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia. Every year, SINTEF supports research and development at 2,000 or so Norwegian and overseas companies via its research and development activity.
SINTEF was established in Trondheim in 1950 and expanded rapidly in the following years. The largest expansion came in 1993 when the "Centre for Industrial Research" in Oslo merged with SINTEF and created the SINTEF Oslo campus. The SINTEF Group currently consists of 12 research institutes, of which the 10 year old SINTEF Fisheries and Aquaculture is one.