Do you ever wonder where your fish comes from?
from Pixabay
There’s a 50% chance that it comes from a farm!
Aquaculture — the breeding, raising and harvesting of fish, shellfish and aquatic plants — is one of the fastest growing food sectors in the world. We now produce more farmed fish than beef and industrial fish farms are continuing to pop up everywhere. And as the world population keeps growing and climate change keeps getting worse, aquaculture has the potential to support food security, climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation. It has been hailed as a solution to providing people with sustainable and reliable nutrition.
It mostly depends on what and how we farm.
A recent UBC study focused on the first part of the equation: which species should be farmed to best support food, climate and biodiversity goals?
The study, published in npj Ocean Sustainability, looked at different species’ traits and found what traits were associated with supporting food, climate and biodiversity (FCB) goals. It also explored the potential of aquaculture to support these FCB goals. The study found that a species’ tolerance to various environmental conditions highly influenced their ability to help aquaculture achieve FCB goals, but this also varies across different species.
“Algae and molluscs, and other species lower in the food chain, have high benefits across all FCB categories,” said Aleah Wong, lead author and PhD student at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. “By exploring potential FCB trade-offs and synergies of different aquaculture species, our research adds a really important perspective to the conversation about improving aquaculture production.”
Technology has made it possible
Image by Tapani Hellman from Pixabay
Aquaculture technology has made it possible to grow food in coastal marine waters and the open ocean. There are two main types of aquaculture — marine and freshwater. Marine aquaculture includes oysters, clams, mussels, shrimp, seaweeds, and fish. Properly done, aquaculture has the potential to produce food for millions of people, conserve and restore ecosystems and replenish endangered wild fish stocks.
The study used a literature review to look at the key traits of aquaculture species commonly associated with food, climate and biodiversity goals. After narrowing down the different species to 50 of the world’s top-farmed aquatic species, the study quantified each species’ potential to support FCB goals.
“This is the first paper that assesses aquaculture through the lens of food security, climate change, and biodiversity,” said Rashid Sumaila, co-author and University Killam professor at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries.
“There is a lot of potential for aquaculture to be part of the solution to meet the challenges of the Food-Climate-Biodiversity nexus, but we need to carefully consider the trade-offs and other impacts of aquaculture,” said senior author, William Cheung, professor and director of the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. “The information gathered in our study can help guide policymakers and industry actors in selecting and managing aquaculture species to maximize environmental and socio-economic benefits. We can help inform global sustainability goals and help inform countries and governments make decisions domestically and internationally.”
The 17 Goals | Sustainable Development
Aquaculture has the potential to help countries continue their efforts to achieve different global sustainability goals, specifically the goals that have to do with food security, climate change mitigation and biodiversity conservation.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted by all United Nation Member States in 2015. A key part of the agenda are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which is the recognition that ending poverty and other hardships must be included in all strategies to improve health and education, reduce inequality and increase economic growth while tackling climate change and working to conserve our planet.
The 17 Sustainable Development Goals © The United Nations
Aquaculture and food security
More than 3 billion people rely on wild-caught and farmed seafood as a significant portion of their protein intake, and in the face of climate change, this reliance on fish can be difficult. Weather events can change people’s ability to reliably catch or buy seafood. With bottom trawling and mass commercial fishing, fish numbers are also decreasing quickly, which also increases the prices of seafood. This is especially true for people in coastal, developing countries who heavily rely on seafood and are more vulnerable to food insecurity.
Aquaculture, if done responsibly, can be one of the most environmentally sustainable ways to address food insecurity. It can help address many sustainability goals, including:
Sustainable Development Goals © The United Nations
“We need to carefully design the aquaculture sector so that it contributes meaningfully to food security,” said Sumaila. “Aquaculture should not only add to the number of fish available to feed people but also be a sustainable and long-term oriented sector.”
The UBC study highlights that aquaculture is very important to food security because it provides a sustainable source of high-quality protein that can be climate-resilient and can have relatively low environmental impacts. Aquaculture must be monitored and consistently re-assessed to make sure it is hitting sustainability goals and helping people and the environment.
“There is real potential for aquaculture to support global food systems and improve resilience against climate-related food shortages if it is well- designed and implemented,” said Cheung. “It may be able to help us with some of the food shortage problems we have, and give people agency and freedom in their food selection.”
Aquaculture and climate change
Aquaculture can not only alleviate food insecurity but also generate much lower carbon footprints than other animal production processes. The study found that aquaculture can play a significant role in climate change mitigation by providing low-carbon protein sources for millions of people around the world. In particular, farming certain species including seaweeds and many invertebrates, can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, alleviate pressure on the environment and support climate adaptation. Farming certain species can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support climate adaptation — including seaweeds and many invertebrates.
“Aquaculture can play a significant role in climate change mitigation by providing low-carbon protein sources,” said Cheung. “It’s very important to choose and manage the right aquaculture species so aquaculture can contribute positively to sustainability goals. By doing this correctly, we can support sustainable food systems and reduce environmental impacts.”
Producing climate-resilient food production systems can help countries achieve many global sustainability goals, including:
Sustainable Development Goals © The United Nations
Aquaculture and biodiversity conservation
Aquaculture can be used as a tool to help ecosystems flourish and thrive. Cultured seafood can help reduce the pressure on overexploited wild stocks, enhance depleted stocks, boost natural production and species diversity and help reduce other more destructive methods such as bottom trawling.
This can help achieve global sustainability goals, including:
Sustainable Development Goals © The United Nations
On the other hand, aquaculture can also have negative effects on biodiversity. Species that escape from open net aquaculture can become invasive to the areas where they are not native to. Feeding aquaculture species may also have negative impacts because they may eat fish meal, which is becoming increasingly scarce. Aquaculture species can also transmit diseases to wild fish who do not have immunity.
“It’s important to select aquaculture species with traits that support biodiversity conservation, including species low on the food web and native species,” said Cheung. “That’s why we have to have careful management practices to minimize any negative impacts (like habitat destruction and invasive species introduction). This will help us balance aquaculture development with biodiversity conversation.”
Going forward…
Aquaculture can be an incredible solution to alleviate our current problems with food security, climate change and biodiversity.
“Now that we know which aquaculture species might best support FCB goals, we need to explore the impact of different production systems,” said Wong. “Future studies can use our methods to compare species and their FCB potential in specific locations and production contexts.”
Image by ymyphoto from Pixabay
A traits-based approach to assess aquaculture’s contributions to food, climate change, and biodiversity goals was published in the npj Ocean Sustainability.
Tags: Aquaculture, biodiversity conservation, Climate change, fishing farms, food security, IOF students, Rashid Sumaila, Research, William Cheung