Salmon aquaculture and coastal ecosystem health in Chile: Analysis of regulations,environmental impacts and bioremediation systems

In 2007 salmon, mollusk and seaweed aquaculture production in Chile totaled 904 thousand tonnes, making the nation the leading marine aquaculture producer in the western world. Salmonids grown in open cage net pens account for over 73% of the production. This review summarizes the current status of Chilean aquaculture and proposes the establishment of new regulations and monitoring programmes that encourage and accommodate emerging bioremediation technologies. In contrast to a rapidly expanding, well-financed and technologically advanced industry, the regulatory structure in Chile is outdated and based on insufficient science. The number of publications on the environmental impacts of salmon aquaculture in Chile is low relative to its production level. Nevertheless, the impacts of organic and inorganic waste on benthic communities, pelagic organisms and bird populations are documented. The technology to reduce these impacts using integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) strategies exists, but has not been implemented at commercial scales. We call on the government and industry to support the creation of a well-financed and politically independent agency responsible for developing and enforcing science-based environmental regulations in Chile. The agency's immediate goal should be to fund research required to develop a transparent, ecosystem-based regulatory framework that promotes IMTA. Monitoring programs and licensing procedures must consider the impacts of individual sites and the cumulative impacts from multiple sites across a wide range of spatial scales. Before such changes are realized, environmental threats and human health risks will remain unacceptably high and salmon farming in Chile will not meet any reasonable definition of sustainability.     

Development of BOATDSS high speed boat design database

Yachts and recreational boats have been growing in popularity throughout the world. In the United States alone they have a 2% annual growth rate. This growth has created the market for new boats built with improved hull materials and new hull forms, propulsion motors and fabrication techniques. With this growth in boat designs and technology developments, it is useful to examine the current trends in pleasure boat design. This paper addresses the development and utilization of a relational pleasure boat database BOATDSS–Boat Decision Support System. The BOATDSS database contains the data on 850 boat designs. The Decision Support System portion of the BOATDSS is organized to use this data for decision support such as a buyer shopping or a builder examining the potential of a new boat entering the present boat market. Several results from BOATDSS are presented to illustrate its use during the conception and preliminary design of recreational boats.     

Media framing of aquaculture

Norway is the world's largest producer of farmed salmon. Aquaculture is the country's second largest export industry and thus vital for employment in coastal areas of Norway. The industry is dependent on public acceptance and good standing in local communities in order to gain access to new sites and to be able to sell its product. Public opinion (and assumptions about public opinion) on aquaculture may influence the industry's framework conditions and policy. Being located in coastal and rural areas, the industry must rely on the media to spread information to the public about the industry. Therefore, the media are an important source of information about farmed salmon, and the way the media present aquaculture issues has an impact on public opinion as well as authorities. This article examines how the aquaculture industry is portrayed in Norwegian newspapers and discusses how media topics and media framing may influence public opinion. The analysis shows that the most frequent topics covered in Norwegian newspapers are connected to the environment, aquaculture industry, and politics, where the concerns about the environment are dominant within the risk frame. The negative images portrayed by the media have a strong agenda-setting force and may skew public opinion to a narrow focus on environmental risks, influencing both the debate's content and the regulators’ increased emphasis on environmental risks. This is strengthened further by the focus on sustainability, where the focus is solely on the dimension of environment, making other sustainability dimensions less prominent in the media coverage.     

Blue growth and ecosystem services

The recent years have witnessed a rise in interest in the ocean economy. To cover a more sustainable dimension, terms such as ‘blue economy’ and ‘blue growth’ have been coined, and are increasingly used in international contexts and academic literature. However, there are no generally accepted definitions of these ‘blue’ concepts. In particular, it is not clear what connotation of sustainability and what role of natural environment is linked to these terms. The objective of this study is to retrace the meaning of the concepts of blue economy and blue growth and include them in a coherent environmental accounting framework. Starting from the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting of the United Nations, a set of assumptions is proposed to link blue economy/growth and ecosystem services, including the creation of an adjusted measure of value added, while considering the depletion and degradation of the environment and the value of non-market benefits provided by the ecosystem. Finally, an example of this approach in the case of the Mediterranean Sea is presented.     

Evaluating sustainability criteria for a marine protected area in Veracruz,Mexico

Marine protected areas are designed to protect natural resources within their limits. The National Park Veracruz Reef System was declared a protected area in 1992, however in the ensuing 17 years only limited measures have been taken to reduce harvesting within the area. This study was conducted as a base line to evaluate the sustainability of the park area in the present open access regime. Indicators were selected based upon sustainability attributes and criteria previously defined, patterned after a method used to evaluate sustainability in agricultural systems. To evaluate the selected indicators questionnaires were applied to the inhabitants of three fishing communities surrounding the park. Results show a precarious sustainability index for the reef system of 45.87%. We observed differences in the sustainability indices for the three communities when a classification and ordination analysis were applied. Also, applying this analysis to the indices, we found differences between social and economic criteria. The application of this kind of evaluation for the management of the area is discussed.     

Stakeholder perspectives on ecosystem-based management of the Antarctic krill fishery

Information about stakeholder aspirations is a fundamental requirement for ecosystem-based management, but the detail is often elusive, and debates may focus on simplistic opposing positions. This is exemplified by the Antarctic krill fishery, which, despite a current operational catch limit equivalent to just 1% of the estimated biomass and actual annual catches much lower than this, is the subject of a high-profile debate framed around ambiguous concepts such as sustainability. Q methodology was applied to explore the detailed views of representatives of three stakeholder sectors (the fishing industry, conservation-focused non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and scientists from seven countries involved in research on the krill-based ecosystem). The analysis distinguished two clear groupings, one of which included the views of all NGO participants while the other included the views of fishing industry participants and a subset of the scientists. Key differences between the groups included the priority given to different management measures, and to continued commercial fishing. However, the results also revealed considerable overlap between viewpoints. Both groups prioritised the maintenance of ecosystem health and recognised the importance of defining management objectives. Also, neither group prioritised a decrease in catch limits. This suggests that most participants in the study agree that management should improve but do not perceive a major problem in the ecosystem's ability to support current catch levels. Cooperation to identify shared management objectives based on stakeholder aspirations for the ecosystem might enhance progress, whereas polarised discussions about preferred management measures or ambiguous concepts are likely to impede progress.     

Validating RAPFISH sustainability indicators: Focus on multi-disciplinary aspects of Indian marine fisheries

In determining the importance of fisheries sustainability indicators, stakeholders’ interest plays a defining role in the fisheries management practices. The indicator based tools such as RAPFISH have been available for sustainability assessment of fishery resources. In the present study, procedures to validate the pre-selected RAPFISH, which is a multidisciplinary indicator based evaluation tool for measuring the sustainability of fishery resources, are applied. The sustainability indicators were subjected to validation process based on feedback from resource owners, users and experts, using Multi-Criteria Analyses such as Weighted Sum Model and Analytic Hierarchy Process. Based on the validation results, suggestions have been made to improve methodology and its effective application in practice. This paper demonstrates RAPFISH as a potentially effective multidisciplinary tool for evaluation of sustainability of fishery resources.     

基于证据理论的风暴潮灾害损失评估

本文提出了一种基于Dempster-Shafer证据理论的风暴潮灾害损失评估方法。鉴于风暴潮致灾过程中的不确定性, 选择合适的具有代表性指标(包括最大风暴潮增水、最大有效波高和防灾减灾能力)产生灾害损失评估的证据, 并根据所选指标和风暴潮直接经济损失之间的相关性大小确定证据权重, 最后采用改进的Murphy证据融合算法进行证据融合, 从而判断灾害损失等级。通过实证分析发现, 本文所提出的方法在判断风暴潮灾害损失等级上的正确率达到93.1%, 优于朴素贝叶斯、支持向量机、神经网络和决策树等常用方法, 同时本文方法计算简便, 且随着训练集样本量的增加, 损失评估结果可进一步精细化。     

Application of criteria and indicators in community based sustainable mangrove management in the Sunderbans,India

Management of mangroves in a sustainable ecological as well as economic way is a difficult proposition and needs multi-disciplinary intervention. This paper highlights the importance of criteria and indicators to evaluate the status of performance of communities in managing their mangroves sustainably. The framework developed on the basis of 6 principles, 12 criteria, 36 indicators and 47 verifiers had been applied for assessment of Eco-Development Committees of the Sunderbans, India. Results show the presence of a highly positive correlation between performance of the committees and condition of the mangrove environment. Level of implementation of legal and institutional management strategies to protect mangroves proves to be the essential pre-condition in achieving sustainability. The study further demonstrates the effectiveness of the developed framework in the context of community forestry since the methodology was designed to be simple and flexible so as to apply it in forest management unit level without any major difficulty.     

Unjust and unsustainable: A case study of the Açu port industrial complex

Given their potential for social and ecosystem disruption along with job creation and economic stimulus, the proliferation of extremely large-scale investment projects worldwide has created a dilemma for policymakers and public authorities. Although one method of balancing the varied interests of stakeholders is to require that development projects be sustainable, the definition of this concept has become muddled and few practical frameworks for its implementation have emerged. One strategy that does exist, however, is the just sustainability framework. The present study sought to assess the just sustainability of the Açu industrial seaport megaproject in Rio de Janeiro State, Brazil through the application of a questionnaire among 60 active marine artisan fishers of a nearby community. The results indicate that the megaproject was not sustainable. Furthermore, the results of the just sustainability indicators triangulated both with the study's primary fisher ethnographic data and with peer-reviewed scientific assessments of similar projects, thus confirming the potential value of the just sustainability framework for assessment and policy formulation.     

渤海区域海洋经济与可持续发展研究

根据目前渤海海洋资源开发利用及海洋环境的现状,结合渤海海洋经济可持续发展的需要,分析了海洋资源、海洋环境和可持续发展之间的关系。为了实现渤海海洋经济的可持续发展,提出了合理利用海洋资源、保护海洋生态环境、优化产业结构、科技兴海的几点措施,为海洋资源管理部门的决策提供依据。     

A methodology for defining homogeneous water bodies in estuaries – Application to the transitional systems of the EU Water Framework Directive

A methodology is developed and tested for division of estuarine and coastal systems into water bodies for monitoring and management purposes. This division is often implicit in the choice of sampling stations and in pollution abatement measures applied to different locations – it is now an explicit requirement of European Union Directive 2000/60/EC (Water Framework Directive) and recommended by United States Agencies such as EPA and NOAA. The approach considers both natural characteristics and the human dimension, by means of a stepwise methodology, which considers, on the one hand, morphology and salinity distribution, and, on the other, appropriate indicators of pressure and state. In the present application, nitrogen and phosphorus loading was used as the pressure component and chlorophyll a and dissolved oxygen as indicators of state. The criteria for system division were defined based on (1) an adimensional shape factor and salinity classes for the natural component; and (2) a normalised pressure index and (ASSETS) eutrophication symptom classes for the human dimension. Water quality databases and GIS were used to develop spatial distributions for the various components, and the results were aggregated into a final water body division, using tidal excursion as a “common sense” test. The methodology was applied to three well-studied systems in Portugal, a tubular estuary (Mondego), a wide lagunal estuary (Sado) and a coastal barrier island system (Ria Formosa). Although a final definition of water bodies will usually be a policy decision, this type of approach for the division of coastal systems into management units scientifically informs the decision-making process.     

Integrating economy, ecology and uncertainty in an oil-spill DSS: The Prestige accident in Spain, 2002

Major accidental oil spills still affect sensitive marine areas and shorelines around the world, constituting a challenge for operational as well as strategic contingency management. As a rationale basis for addressing both issues we here propose a Decision Support System (DSS) consisting of a combination of modelling and evaluation methods which in particular assesses various impacts on habitats and local economies. By integrating the state-of-the-art oil spill contingency simulation system OSCAR with wind and current forecasts, environmental GIS data and multi-criteria analysis techniques, the DSS is able to rank different response actions to a chemical or oil spill. In this study, the usefulness of the approach is tested by hindcasting the Prestige accident off the coast of Spain in 2002. In particular, the short- to mid-term economic and ecological consequences of different mitigation measures are estimated. We identified clearly one worst option matching the actual decision taken by the responsible parties and one or two almost equally well performing routes. Two procedures of including uncertainty at various stages of the DSS are tested. The first method averages ensembles of outcomes between each modelling/evaluation stage, while the second one preserves the entire degree of freedom till the final ranking procedure. Results in the Prestige case turned out to be rather insensitive against both ways to account for uncertainties. The robustness as well as clarity of the DSS has the potential to enhance the efficiency of decision making even in politically sensitive situations. Limitations as well as ongoing improvements of the system are highlighted, in particular emphasizing linkages to environmental economics.     

Can cod farming affect cod fishing? A system evaluation of sustainability

The cod resources in the Barents Sea constitute the most important fisheries in Norway. In order to reduce resource allocation conflicts among different gear and vessel groups and to ensure profit for all participants throughout the value chain, the sector is thoroughly organized. The institutions established to ensure long-term sustainability, have been developed within the framework of a joint Norwegian–Russian fisheries management regime. However, due to a very high fishing mortality, the cod stock is now under severe pressure. In addition, a major part of the cod fisheries is highly seasonal and unable to be a stable supplier to neither the land-based industry nor demanding international markets. In parallel, cod farming is expected to become a new emerging industry, with potential to copy the success of farmed Atlantic salmon. Many actors within the cod fisheries fear the future competition from the growing cod farming sector. With reference to important attributes that characterize the cod fisheries and cod farming, this paper discusses how a future farming industry may affect the traditional cod fisheries. Moreover, we discuss how the fisheries may be forced to organize in the future to encounter the expected competition from cod farming.     

The risk to New Zealand shellfish aquaculture from paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxins

New Zealand's reputation as a supplier of high quality food products is vital to the national economy; international consumers are acutely aware of food safety issues and markets are increasingly demanding higher standards. Filter feeding bivalves are particularly sensitive to the nature of the environment in which they are grown, and quality assurance is a major preoccupation of the shellfish aquaculture industry. With the exception of a couple of incidents, most notably the Gymnodinium catenatum blooms in 2000–2003, paralytic shellfish toxin (PST) contamination has, to date, not had an important effect on the economics and sustainability of the industry. However, the dinoflagellate species responsible for producing these toxins are not uncommon in New Zealand coastal phytoplankton communities, and it is important that awareness of the potential risk is maintained. This review summarises what we know about the causes and incidence of PST contamination from research and monitoring over the last 20 years, since it was first identified in New Zealand. It describes the dynamics of major events and their consequences, and evaluates what is likely to happen in the future as aquaculture expands into new areas with known histories of this problem.     

Diversity in narratives to green the Norwegian salmon farming industry

Despite being an economic success and generating considerable profit, the Norwegian salmon farming industry face environmental challenges that need to be solved. Since 2014, all new licenses to farm salmon are labelled either “light-green”, dark-green” or “development licenses”. The industry is nevertheless characterized by the open net-pen as a hegemonic technology, and is susceptible to both cognitive and political lock-in. In the article, it is defined which narratives on “greening criteria” that are dominant and an analysis is presented on how narratives influence new licenses for salmon farming. The data is derived from 52 qualitative interviews and a broad qualitative analysis of trends and debates in the industry. From the perspective of evolutionary economic geography and the sub-concept path dependency, narratives on greening criteria for future salmon farming are divided in three categories: path extension, modest path renewal and strong path renewal. The findings reveal that although most licenses are linked to mere path extension, development licenses might disrupt this trend.     

基于能值分析的江苏省绿色海洋经济可持续发展研究

随着海洋经济的迅速发展,开发利用海洋资源与保护生态环境之间的矛盾日益突出,因此,评估绿色海洋经济可持续发展的态势对促进海洋经济和生态环境的协调发展意义深远。本文以江苏省为研究区,利用能值分析理论和方法,将海洋经济系统内可更新资源、不可更新资源、货币流、废物流等各类要素,通过能值转换率转换为统一标准的太阳能值,采用海域能值-货币比率、人均海域能值使用量、能值可持续发展指数、绿色海洋生产总值(绿色GOP)等指标,测度了2011—2015年江苏省绿色海洋经济可持续发展水平,旨在推进海洋经济可持续发展研究方法的应用,为江苏省海洋经济系统的综合评价及可持续发展管理提供科学依据。研究表明:(1)2011—2015年,江苏省绿色GOP持续增长,占传统GOP的比重从74.8%升至77.8%,表明江苏省在海洋经济快速增长的过程中,没有忽视对海洋资源和生态环境的保护。(2)江苏省绿色海洋经济可持续发展处于不稳定的状态:2011年可持续发展指数为12.77,2012—2015年可持续发展指数在6.87～9.70之间波动,表明江苏省海洋经济系统从经济不发达以及对海洋资源的开发利用程度不足,逐步过渡到海洋经济富有活力,发展效益好,可持续性强。     

广东海岸带可持续发展决策支持系统总体框架

在阐述了广东海岸带可持续发展决策支持系统的概念后,根据系统的应用需求,确立了系统的总体目标和功能结构,并重点研究了地理信息技术、空间元数据、空间数据仓库技术和决策支持模型与方法等关键技术,在广东海岸带复杂动态海量多源数据的获取、更新、管理、分析与决策中的重要意义和作用,力求为广东海岸带可持续发展决策支持系统的详细分析设计和开发实践提供规范化的解决方案。     

Estimating the Irish public's willingness to pay for more sustainable salmon produced by integrated multi-trophic aquaculture

Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) has been put forward as a potential sustainable alternative to single fin fish species aquaculture. In IMTA, several species are combined in the production process. Integrating species has a conceivable dual advantage; the environmental impact can be lowered through nutrient cycling and from an economic perspective there is potential for increased efficiency, product diversification and a higher willingness to pay for more environmentally friendly produced salmon. This paper presents the results from a choice experiment which examines whether the Irish public is willing to pay a premium for “sustainably produced” farmed salmon from an IMTA process. Uniquely, an ecolabel was used in the design, based on familiar energy rating labels, to communicate the environmental pressure of fish farming to respondents. The experiment demonstrates that the Irish public has a willingness to pay a price premium for sustainability in salmon farming and for locally produced salmon.