Issue 3, October 2006

Researchers Gather in Halifax for First Annual VEMCO Days

The recent VEMCO Days Conference held in Halifax, Nova Scotia on September 21st and 22nd gave some of the world's marine researchers and biologists the opportunity to provide input on VEMCO's current and planned product lines.

VEMCO customers and employees gather for product seminars.

We believe that good products are made even better through successful collaboration between the engineers who develop the technology behind the products and the scientists who use them in their respective fields of research. This collaboration enables us to manufacture the most sophisticated, reliable fish monitoring equipment available today.

While we at VEMCO have always solicited individual feedback from our customers, VEMCO Days provided an open forum for researchers to engage in face to face discussions with VEMCO's senior managers and lead engineers. The format has proven to be universally beneficial.

While we gain a thorough understanding of the application and its users which is essential to developing world class products, the scientists share information with their peers about their respective research projects and how they can leverage each other's data using VEMCO equipment.

Topics covered on the first day included Capability and Limitations of Acoustic Telemetry, VEMCO 69kHz Telemetry Products Overview, Using and Understanding VR2 and VR3, Worldwide IDs and Code Maps, Accessing and Processing Receiver Data including Database Issue, and Future Product Directions. The second day concluded with demonstrations of various VEMCO equipment and software in the morning, and social activities including golf and boating in the afternoon.

VEMCO customers and employees get to
know each other outside the "classroom".

VEMCO Days was well received by all participants and feedback indicates all would be interested in having the event continue. The general consensus is that VEMCO Days should be held annually and also expand from its current one and a half day format to two and a half days.

Through the collaborative efforts of engineers and scientists, the future of our products and technology at VEMCO is unlimited. Researchers want to learn more than detecting where fish are at any given time. They want to know where the fish has been, what it experienced, what other tagged fish it encountered and much, much more. As long as scientists continue to imagine "what if", VEMCO's R&D teams are poised to develop the equipment to enable them to get the answers they seek.