Abstract
To meet the demand for food from a growing global population, aquaculture production is under great pressure to increase as capture fisheries have stagnated. However, aquaculture has raised a range of environmental concerns, and further increases in aquaculture production will face widespread environmental challenges. The effects of climate change will pose a further threat to global aquaculture production. Aquaculture is often at risk from a combination of climatic variables, including cyclone, drought, flood, global warming, ocean acidification, rainfall variation, salinity, and sea level rise. For aquaculture growth to be sustainable its environmental impacts must reduce significantly. Adaptation to climate change is also needed to produce more fish without environmental impacts. Some adaptation strategies including integrated aquaculture, recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS), and the expansion of seafood farming could increase aquaculture productivity, environmental sustainability, and climate change adaptability.
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Notes
Aquaculture is practiced in three different water environments: (1) freshwater, (2) brackish water, and (3) seawater. Regardless of water environments, aquaculture can be divided into: (1) single species monoculture, (2) multiple species polyculture, and (3) integrated aquaculture with agriculture. Based on culture intensity as well as farming inputs (seed, feed, and fertilizer), aquaculture can be classified into: (1) extensive, (2) semi-intensive, and (3) intensive.
After being the most traded product in fish for decades, shrimp now ranks second in terms of value after salmon (including trout), whereas carp is the most dominant group of aquaculture fish in terms of volume (FAO 2018a).
The World Food Day on October 16, 2018 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations highlighted “a zero hunger world by 2030 is possible” (FAO 2018b).
Water is still available for other uses due to not consuming water.
Fish oil is extracted from fish while producing fishmeal. To prepare aquafeeds, the demand of fish oil is lower than fishmeal as only a few species require fish oil. The fish oil is a good source of nutrition, which provides of a smell to the feed (Robb et al. 2017).
Carbon in coastal and marine ecosystems is known as blue carbon, which is stored, sequestered, and released from mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrasses.
El Niño is a climate cycle in the Tropical Pacific Ocean with warm temperatures.
“Life below water” is one of the sustainable development goals by the United Nations, aiming to conserve and sustainably use the seas, oceans, and marine resources.
Rainfall erosivity is an erosive power of rainfall to cause soil erosion or loss by water.
Offshore mariculture could be operated over 2 km from shore, usually within continental shelf zones.
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Acknowledgments
The study was supported through the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany. The study was a part of the first author’s research work under the Georg Forster Research Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at the Leibniz Center for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) in Bremen, Germany. The study was also linked to the first author’s research at the Natural Resources Institute (NRI), University of Manitoba, Canada. An earlier draft of this paper was presented in March 2017 by the first author at the ZMT, Germany. We thank the audience for their positive encouragement. The views and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZMT or NRI. We thank two anonymous reviewers for insightful comments.
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Ahmed, N., Thompson, S. & Glaser, M. Global Aquaculture Productivity, Environmental Sustainability, and Climate Change Adaptability. Environmental Management 63, 159–172 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-018-1117-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-018-1117-3