I attended the 5th International Symposium on GIS/Spatial Analysis in Fishery and Aquatic Sciences in Wellington last week. My presentation was titled: “Epidemiological methods and their application to aquatic disease control” and was co-authored by my colleagues Andres Perez and Fernando Mardones from UC Davis. Not really my home turf speaking in front of such an audience, but the presentation was very well received and led to some great discussions, which underlined the wide applicability and value of epidemiological methods. I met some very interesting people and am looking forward to potential collaborative projects that might come out of this exchange of ideas and concepts.