Sustainability of port activities within the framework of the fisheries sector: Port of Vigo (NW Spain)

Abstract

Sustainability of the fisheries sector is nowadays a key issue due to the significant impact that this activity may have on the environment. Besides fishing activity itself, other indirect impacts, like those originated from related activities and services also need to be addressed. For assessing the environmental burden of this sector, the indicator Ecological Footprint (EF) can be used. The application of EF to the fisheries sector is still uncommon and studies of associated activities (like ports) even more. In this work, classical EF methodology was applied in order to evaluate the environmental impact of the fisheries sector, taking as a representative sample the global activity (fishing and transportation) of the Port of Vigo (Spain), one of the biggest fishing ports in the world. A high value of total EF for both port and fishing activities was obtained.However, relative EF is much higher in the case of fishing, due to the low natural productivity associated to fish resources. Most of footprint land-components pressure was on energy-land and sea area, being resources consumption the principal category contributing to EF values in all the evaluated scenarios.

Environmental Implications of Discarding Fish in Northern Spanish Coastal Bottom Otter Trawl Fisheries

“…Thus, this difference may be related to the TE value, since this property has a substantial impact on the outcome of the PPR (Parker and Tyedmers, 2012;Cashion et al, 2016). While a mean system-specific TE value of 14% was applied in this study, an average TE value of 10% for aquatic ecosystems was used in Hornborg Again, the results were similar to the previously mentioned studies (Hornborg et al, 2012;Vázquez-Rowe et al, 2012), despite not accounting for the fraction of discarded fish, and probably due to the low value that was used in Lopes et al (2013) for natural productivity.…”

“…This metric is widely used to analyze the sustainability of populations, sectors or activities (Nicolucci et al, 2008;Parker and Tyedmers, 2012;Lin et al, 2018). In the fisheries sector, the EF has been previously used to analyze reef fish marine aquaculture (Warren-Rhodes et al, 2003), marine ecosystem pressures (Swartz et al, 2010), Italian fisheries (de Leo et al, 2014) and port activities (Lopes et al, 2013).…”

Evaluating the key factors of green port policies in Taiwan through quantitative and qualitative approaches

“…Port sustainability is a key issue, and port activities have been shown to have a high Ecological Footprint (EF) (Rees, 1992;Wackernagel and Rees, 1996),for example in the case of the port of Vigo, Spain (Lopes et al, 2013)). The importance of collecting data is also much emphasized (Peris-Mora et al, 2005;Darbra et al, 2009) and in relation to this, a range of port indicators have been suggested, with suggested qualities ranging from 'representativeness', to 'clarity' and…”

“…Another possible solution is to improve fuel efficiency to help reduce a port's EF (Lopes et al, 2013). Cullinane and Cullinane (2013) describe a number of approaches to improving fuel efficiency, such as greater engine efficiency, waste heat recovery, improved hull design and performance, more efficient propellers and rudders, reductions in vessel speed, improved routing and scheduling, and enhanced fleet management.…”

“…Lam and Notteboom, 2014) despite European ports being much studied (e.g. the fisheries sector port of Vigo in Spain (Lopes et al, 2013) and also ports in M A N U S C R I P T…”