Predicting shifting sustainability trade‐offs in marine finfish aquaculture under climate change

Abstract

Defining sustainability goals is a crucial but difficult task because it often involves the quantification of multiple interrelated and sometimes conflicting components. This complexity may be exacerbated by climate change, which will increase environmental vulnerability in aquaculture and potentially compromise the ability to meet the needs of a growing human population. Here, we developed an approach to inform sustainable aquaculture by quantifying spatio-temporal shifts in critical trade-offs between environmental costs and benefits using the time to reach the commercial size as a possible proxy of economic implications of aquaculture under climate change. Our results indicate that optimizing aquaculture practices by minimizing impact (this study considers as impact a benthic carbon deposition ≥ 1 g C m day ) will become increasingly difficult under climate change. Moreover, an increasing temperature will produce a poleward shift in sustainability trade-offs. These findings suggest that future sustainable management strategies and plans will need to account for the effects of climate change across scales. Overall, our results highlight the importance of integrating environmental factors in order to sustainably manage critical natural resources under shifting climatic conditions.

Functional role of biofouling linked to aquaculture facilities in Mediterranean enclosed locations

“…Despite the effect of fouling communities being commonly seen as being negative, there are several studies highlighting the important role of filtration exerted by foulers (e.g. Hughes et al 2005) as well as how their presence in aquaculture facilities would benefit productions lead to economic savings (Lacoste & Gaertner-Mazouni 2015) and support the the sustainability of aquaculture in a changing climate (Sarà et al 2018).…”

Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture: A Laboratory and Hands-on Experimental Activity to Promote Environmental Sustainability Awareness and Value of Aquaculture Products

“…Among the actions taken are, for example, the restrictions imposed by several countries to the use of chemotherapeutic agents or ground innovation reducing the use of fish meal and oil in feeds (Gatlin et al, 2007;Moutinho et al, 2017), investigation and use of natural feed additives to improve growth and feed efficiency (Magalhães et al, 2016), power the immune system and enhance the resistance to disease (Azeredo et al, 2017). Despite this effort, intensive aquaculture production still releases high amounts of nutrients and organic wastes into the environment that can cause eutrophication of coastal areas and other aquatic systems (Sarà et al, 2018a). This is because only about 20-40% of the nitrogen (Oliva-Teles et al, 2020) and less than 50% of the energy intake (Bureau et al, 2002;Peres and Oliva-Teles, 2005) are retained by the species produced.…”

The role of two non-indigenous serpulid tube worms in shaping artificial hard substrata communities: case study of a fish farm in the central Mediterranean Sea

“…Non-indigenous species (NIS) are recognised as one of the major threats affecting biodiversity worldwide (Didham et al 2007, Molnar et al 2008) and since the last decade have become one of the focus areas of bioinvasion science (Pyšek & Richardson 2010, Vilà et al 2011, Kumschick et al 2015. NIS abundance and diversity vary on both regional and global scales, in both terrestrial and aquatic environments (Molnar et al 2008, Byers et al 2015, van Kleunen et al 2015, Fletcher et al 2016), according to a complex combination of differences in life histories and biological traits, timing and type of transport vectors, and abiotic and interactive biotic factors in the recipient environment (Wonham & Carlton 2005, Hulme et al 2015, Cardeccia et al 2018, Sarà et al 2018c. Invasions can generate further cascading effects, such as the alteration of local inter-and intraspecific relationships within native species (Shea & Chesson 2002, Wallentinus & Nyberg 2007 and the alteration of resource dynamics, which facilitate NIS spreading and further enhance the effects on biodiversity at a local scale (Meiners et al 2001, Stachowicz et al 2002, Yurkonis et al 2005.…”

“…To disentangle the set of factors that can determine larval settlement and intra-or interspecific interactions along successive stages of colonisation (from recruitment to the maximum density step), it may be crucial to have an in-depth understanding of sessile NIS distribution and density (Bramanti et al 2003). Such information is valuable when setting up modelling exercises (Sarà et al 2018c) or when shaping new regional and cross-border NIS management strategies and plans and, more specifically, to facilitate the evaluation of risks and impacts associated with future spreading .…”