The Future Of Sustainable Fish Farming
Due to the space available and advances in remote accessed and AI technologies, Open Ocean Aquaculture has rapidly become the new frontier in the future growth of marine aquaculture.
It’s widely accepted that the demand for protein is growing sharply and that seafood has a role to play in meeting that demand. To some degree this has been happening – aquaculture has provided almost all the growth in seafood production since 1995, a trend that the OECD and FAO forecasts to continue.
It’s clear that aquaculture has played a significant role to date in reducing pressure on wild stocks at the same time as providing jobs in local communities.
It’s also true that aquaculture in general and marine aquaculture specifically has more to bring to the table which is why it’s exciting to see governments around the world moving to develop and introduce frameworks for the introduction of open ocean and offshore fish farming regulations in their exclusive economic zones.
Given this ongoing work, it’s a good time to look at the benefits of open ocean aquaculture and why it is the future of responsible, sustainable marine farming.
What is Open Ocean Aquaculture?
There is no singular definition of what conditions constitute open ocean, offshore or even high energy aquaculture. In practical terms we can say it’s marine farming in exposed areas, where the influence of water depth, large ocean swells, currents and storms are more significant than that of coastal land masses. It’s a tough environment requiring the adoption of robust farm systems and new technologies supported by sound engineering.
- More opportunity for spatial planning – there is vastly more space available with few competing uses. Farm zones can be located away from recreational and traditional fishing grounds and commercial shipping lanes
- Well planned open ocean sites can offer better conditions for farming – cool, stable water temperatures, faster water exchange/consistently high dissolved oxygen levels lead to healthier and faster growing fish allowing for positioning as a premium product
- The spaces allocated to open ocean aquaculture can also be environmentally better suited to fish farming than sheltered inshore sites and use just a tiny portion of a nations available space
- Allocating small portions of available space with suitable environmental characteristics and few competing uses allows for a stable regulatory and planning regime leading to greater certainty and promoting investment
- Investment to meet growing seafood demand creates high quality jobs in local communities
This list illustrates the benefits to all stakeholders in open ocean fish farming. Farmers get more certainty, access to better quality water and can offer a premium product so are more likely to invest and grow, local communities benefit from direct and indirect job creation and the government, local communities and the public benefit from fewer resource conflicts and improved environmental outcomes.