Potential Influence of Climate Change on Shellfish Aquaculture System in the Temperate Region

Abstract

Aquaculture is challenged by a number of constraints with future efforts towards sustainable production. Global climate change has a potential damage to the sustainability by changing environmental surroundings unfavorably. The damaging parameters identified are water temperature, sea level, surface physical energy, precipitation, solar radiation, ocean acidification, and so on. Of them, temperature, mostly temperature elevation, occupies significant concern among marine ecologists and aquaculturists. Ocean acidification particularly draws shellfish aquaculturists' attention as it alters the marine chemistry, shifting the equilibrium towards more dissolved CO 2 and hydrogen ions (H + ) and thus influencing signaling pathways on shell formation, immune system, and other biological processes. Temperature elevation by climate change is of double-sidedness: it can be an opportunistic parameter besides being a generally known damaging parameter in aquaculture. It can provide better environments for faster and longer growth for aquaculture species. It is also somehow advantageous for alleviation of aquaculture expansion pressure in a given location by opening a gate for new species and aquaculture zone expansion northward in the northern hemisphere, otherwise unavailable due to temperature limit. But in the science of climate change, the ways of influence on aquaculture are complex and ambiguous, and hence are still hard to identify and quantify. At the same time considerable parts of our knowledge on climate change effects on aquaculture are from the estimates from data of fisheries and agriculture. The consequences may be different from what they really are, particularly in the temperature region. In reality, bivalves and tunicates hung or caged in the longline system are often exposed to temperatures higher than those they encounter in nature, locally driving the farmed shellfish into an upper tolerable temperature extreme. We review recent climate change and following environment changes which can be factors or potential factors affecting shellfish aquaculture production in the temperate region.