Epilogue
Modern, industrial marine aquaculture is an emerging industry and uses marine
resources to produce food to the human population. It builds upon long human
experience of fishing, culturing and handling of fish and marine organisms around
the world, combined with experience derived from much longer tradition of agriculture. Seafood products are tasty and healthy, and society is willing to pay a high
price to get the best products. Due to stagnant or declining fisheries, aquaculture
products are becoming ever more important as supplementary products to wild
catches. The ten chapters of this book are based on at least two decades of intensive
research in aquaculture with contributions from researchers from all over the world.
Aquaculture is a global industry, and with this book we hope that the reader has
achieved an overview of the current trends in environmental, economic and social
aspects of this growing industry.
During the preparation of this book, it became apparent that aquaculture has the
potential to continue feeding the human population products from the sea, and even
contribute significantly to global food production, and feeding the growing human
population in the future. In contrast to the production of crops and meat on land,
marine aquaculture production is almost independent of fresh water as a resource.
Fresh water is likely to become a limiting resource at given a human population of
9 billion, which is expected to be reached by 2050 (Duarte et al. in preparation). In
contrast to fisheries, which are stagnant and may even decline due to overfishing of
particularly top-carnivore species, aquaculture production has the potential to
increase, but only if certain bottlenecks of the industry can be overcome. In this
book, the four most important bottlenecks for aquaculture are identified as: (1) the
availability, suitability and cost of fish feed; (2) space availability for aquaculture
purposes; (3) the environmental impacts of aquaculture and (4) technological and
energetic requirements (Duarte et al. in preparation).
There are several ways to solve the “feed-trap”. Instead of producing high volumes of top-carnivore species such as salmon and cod, a shift to lower trophic levels such as marine algae and bivalves will increase the feed efficiency significant.
Marine algae are already the most important product by volume in aquaculture and
could be used either for human consumption or in a polyculture system as feed for
higher organisms. Bivalves have the advantage of filtering the water, are independent
of artificial feed inputs and may even be beneficial to the environment through
321
Modern, industrial marine aquaculture is an emerging industry and uses marine
resources to produce food to the human population. It builds upon long human
experience of fishing, culturing and handling of fish and marine organisms around
the world, combined with experience derived from much longer tradition of agriculture. Seafood products are tasty and healthy, and society is willing to pay a high
price to get the best products. Due to stagnant or declining fisheries, aquaculture
products are becoming ever more important as supplementary products to wild
catches. The ten chapters of this book are based on at least two decades of intensive
research in aquaculture with contributions from researchers from all over the world.
Aquaculture is a global industry, and with this book we hope that the reader has
achieved an overview of the current trends in environmental, economic and social
aspects of this growing industry.
During the preparation of this book, it became apparent that aquaculture has the
potential to continue feeding the human population products from the sea, and even
contribute significantly to global food production, and feeding the growing human
population in the future. In contrast to the production of crops and meat on land,
marine aquaculture production is almost independent of fresh water as a resource.
Fresh water is likely to become a limiting resource at given a human population of
9 billion, which is expected to be reached by 2050 (Duarte et al. in preparation). In
contrast to fisheries, which are stagnant and may even decline due to overfishing of
particularly top-carnivore species, aquaculture production has the potential to
increase, but only if certain bottlenecks of the industry can be overcome. In this
book, the four most important bottlenecks for aquaculture are identified as: (1) the
availability, suitability and cost of fish feed; (2) space availability for aquaculture
purposes; (3) the environmental impacts of aquaculture and (4) technological and
energetic requirements (Duarte et al. in preparation).
There are several ways to solve the “feed-trap”. Instead of producing high volumes of top-carnivore species such as salmon and cod, a shift to lower trophic levels such as marine algae and bivalves will increase the feed efficiency significant.
Marine algae are already the most important product by volume in aquaculture and
could be used either for human consumption or in a polyculture system as feed for
higher organisms. Bivalves have the advantage of filtering the water, are independent
of artificial feed inputs and may even be beneficial to the environment through
321