8.1 Background
Aquaculture has been widely employed for a long time, i.e. traditional fishpond
aquaculture in Asia has been a significant landscape element for centuries. The last
decades have, however, seen a marine “Neolithic revolution”. About 430 (97%) of
the species presently in aquaculture have been domesticated since the start of the
twentieth century, and 106 species have been domesticated over the past decade
alone (Duarte et al. 2007). Aquaculture is posed to get a prominent role to address
one of the major global challenges at the start of the twenty first century, in
providing alternative sources for marine food proteins, supply and food-security.
Yet, many challenges remain, and not only the numerous technical and biological
issues, but also regarding the social, cultural and economic character of future
development. Indeed, vis á vis the impressive growth in production volumes over
the last decades, with aquaculture expanding from practically being negligible
compared to capture fisheries, to constituting over 40% of total global marine
production (FAO 2014), this development has had manifold socio-economic
repercussions on various levels. This recent rise of aquaculture and accompanying
socio-economic relevance has been coined as the so-called “Blue Revolution”
(Krause et al. 2015). At the same time the growth in capture fisheries seen over the
last 50 years seem to have stagnated (FAO 2014).
Most of this rather recent global growth in aquaculture production has taken
place in inland and coastal areas (FAO 2014). However, there are major obstacles to
accommodate further growth into existing marine resource use patterns, which
would increase conflicts along coastal areas. This is partly due to stakeholder
groups growing in numbers or prominence (Buanes et al. 2005), but also due to the
risk of spread of diseases and parasites between aquaculture farms, which limits
farm densities in coastal areas. Although the typical size of fish farms inshore has
grown strongly the last 10–20 years, the potential for creating very large aquaculture production facilities inshore appears limited. In contrast, in the offshore
realm, the size of aquaculture plants can be much larger, thus targeting at more
cost-efficient scales of production. Hence, moving aquaculture facilities offshore
seems a promising way to try to tackle these challenges and limitations, and the
technology for offshore aquaculture is emerging now (Buck et al. 2008).
The high and rapidly increasing demand for offshore space for different purposes, such as installations for the production of energy from renewable sources, oil
and gas exploration and exploitation, shipping and fishing, nature conservation, the
extraction of raw materials such as sand and gravel, aquaculture installations and
underwater cultural heritage, as well as the multiple pressures on coastal resources,
require an integrated planning and management approach (EU 2014). Indeed, since
the offshore move is rather risky and expensive, a multi-use approach is favored,
that is the integrated production of marine species with other resource uses, such as
offshore wind farms (Buck and Krause 2012). In the case of such multi-use offshore
concepts, the typical practical procedure of looking for the most suitable site will be
confined to those sites where offshore wind farms are planned or already in place.
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G. Krause and E. Mikkelsen
Aquaculture has been widely employed for a long time, i.e. traditional fishpond
aquaculture in Asia has been a significant landscape element for centuries. The last
decades have, however, seen a marine “Neolithic revolution”. About 430 (97%) of
the species presently in aquaculture have been domesticated since the start of the
twentieth century, and 106 species have been domesticated over the past decade
alone (Duarte et al. 2007). Aquaculture is posed to get a prominent role to address
one of the major global challenges at the start of the twenty first century, in
providing alternative sources for marine food proteins, supply and food-security.
Yet, many challenges remain, and not only the numerous technical and biological
issues, but also regarding the social, cultural and economic character of future
development. Indeed, vis á vis the impressive growth in production volumes over
the last decades, with aquaculture expanding from practically being negligible
compared to capture fisheries, to constituting over 40% of total global marine
production (FAO 2014), this development has had manifold socio-economic
repercussions on various levels. This recent rise of aquaculture and accompanying
socio-economic relevance has been coined as the so-called “Blue Revolution”
(Krause et al. 2015). At the same time the growth in capture fisheries seen over the
last 50 years seem to have stagnated (FAO 2014).
Most of this rather recent global growth in aquaculture production has taken
place in inland and coastal areas (FAO 2014). However, there are major obstacles to
accommodate further growth into existing marine resource use patterns, which
would increase conflicts along coastal areas. This is partly due to stakeholder
groups growing in numbers or prominence (Buanes et al. 2005), but also due to the
risk of spread of diseases and parasites between aquaculture farms, which limits
farm densities in coastal areas. Although the typical size of fish farms inshore has
grown strongly the last 10–20 years, the potential for creating very large aquaculture production facilities inshore appears limited. In contrast, in the offshore
realm, the size of aquaculture plants can be much larger, thus targeting at more
cost-efficient scales of production. Hence, moving aquaculture facilities offshore
seems a promising way to try to tackle these challenges and limitations, and the
technology for offshore aquaculture is emerging now (Buck et al. 2008).
The high and rapidly increasing demand for offshore space for different purposes, such as installations for the production of energy from renewable sources, oil
and gas exploration and exploitation, shipping and fishing, nature conservation, the
extraction of raw materials such as sand and gravel, aquaculture installations and
underwater cultural heritage, as well as the multiple pressures on coastal resources,
require an integrated planning and management approach (EU 2014). Indeed, since
the offshore move is rather risky and expensive, a multi-use approach is favored,
that is the integrated production of marine species with other resource uses, such as
offshore wind farms (Buck and Krause 2012). In the case of such multi-use offshore
concepts, the typical practical procedure of looking for the most suitable site will be
confined to those sites where offshore wind farms are planned or already in place.
164
G. Krause and E. Mikkelsen