UNAIR NEWS – Limited land is not an obstacle to learning and doing business, that is one word that is held firmly by the lecturers and students of Faculty of Fisheries and Marine (FPK) PSDKU Universitas Airlangga in Banyuwangi. It is not a secret that PSDKU campus is the new campus and still needs more development. So the academics must be able to utilize every existing potential.

“Previously this facility was IPAL (Waste Water Disposal Installation), which was not used for FPK learning activities, but gradually this place became a wet laboratory owned by FPK,” said M. Hanif Azhar S.Pi., M.Si., FPK UNAIR Banyuwangi lecturer.

FPK lecturer from UNAIR Banyuwangi together with his students managed to utilize vacant land in the back of PSDKU campus to become a place of learning and business for FPK citizens. The long-stretched area with an area of ​​about 3 × 20 m has now been used as a place for research and small business activity carried out by FPK lecturers and their students.

“Currently, there are 6 aquarium shelves, 3 concrete ponds, and 4 round tarpaulin ponds that are ready to be used for practicum and research activities,” he added.

This wet laboratory helps FPK students to understand better the lesson learned in class, because most students say that practical work is easier to understand than lecture material. Some of the courses held in the facility were Management of Fresh Aquaculture, Natural Feeding, Nutrition, and Reproduction.

The small businesses activity carried out in this place were fish and plankton cultivation. The business activity was started from a work program of Aquaculture Student Association (HMBP), named ASC ( Aquaculture Study Club). The program is aimed to create FPK students who have an interpreneurship spirit. Therefore the HMBP board members took FPK lecturers to become mentors in running this small business.

“ASC until now has used 4 round tarpaulins for barb and Daphnia sp. (Plankton) cultivation, and Alhamdulillah we don’t need to go far to apply the knowledge we get in class, ” said Rakian Rizky Dermawan, chairman of ASC.

Creative ideas will always when necessary, FPK UNAIR Banyuwangi residents felt that. So they (FPK lecturers and students) must survive with the existing campus conditions.

“We have to be creative and innovative, be proud of everything, our strength here is kinship, with a family mindset proven right? The distance between the lecturers and FPK students themselves is very close so the former IPAL facility can be used together. Hopefully, PSDKU student must continue to survive, develop the potential and take care of existing ones, ”said the FPK Lecturer.

Author: Bastian Ragas

Editor: Nuri Hermawan