Nitrogen and phosphorus budget in coastal and marine cage aquaculture and impacts of effluent loading on ecosystem: review and analysis towards model development

Being an essentially open system, cages are usually characterized by a high degree of interaction with environment and cage systems are highly likely to produce large bulk of wastes that are released directly into the environment. Therefore, large-scale cage aquaculture development has been put into question and concerns have been raised that cage aquaculture produces large bulk of wastes that are rich in organic matter and nutrients and are released into coastal and nearshore environment. Recent information on cage aquaculture nutrient budget is scarce and most published reports are dated. This paper reviews cage aquaculture nutrient budget and nutrient loadings and propose a model for nutrient (nitrogen, N and phosphorus, P) budget in a hypothetical cage aquaculture farm with values of feed loss, FCR (feed conversion ratio) and nutrient contents in feed and fish taken from published literature in order to calculate the amount (kg) of N and P produced and released to the environment for each ton of fish produced. The paper proposes, in addition, a critically analyzed nutrient budget based on the dry matter conversion rate instead of the usual feed conversion rate. The conceptual model shows that 132.5 kg N and 25.0 kg P are released to the environment for each ton of fish produced; these values are as high as 462.5 kg N and 80.0 kg P when calculated on the basis of dry matter conversion rate instead of usual feed conversion rate. Thus, the annual global N and P loadings from cage aquaculture (10,000 tons fish and 3000 tons dry matter) are 1325 tons N and 250 tons P and 1387.5 tons N and 240.0 tons P based on usual feed conversion rate and dry matter conversion rate respectively. The paper also proposes, by analyzing the existing data, an FCR-based regression model for predicting nutrient loadings for a given diet. Finally, attempt was made to calculate the annual global loading and release of N and P from cage aquaculture to the coastal and marine environment, the potential impacts of nutrient loading on the ecosystem were discussed and critical points to be considered for minimizing nutrient output in cage aquaculture were suggested.