Offshore Mariculture

 

11–13 October 2006 Corinthia San Gorg, Malta

Organised by the Society for Underwater Technology and the Greenwich Forum

Supported by the European Commission, the European Aquaculture Society, the Maltese Ministry of Rural Affairs and the

Environment and Irish Sea Fisheries Board

Sponsored by Aquarius Insurance Services and Royal SunAlliance

 

Summary of the Conference

The conference delegates, drawn from nineteen countries, noted that Mariculture will become a major source of protein to feed the growing world population, that no other source be it wild capture or land-based animal protein will be able to meet. Offshore mariculture offers considerable opportunities for the environmentally sound expansion of the provision of this protein, especially in terms of volume of supply, and should be an integral part of these developments.

The practical experience reported at the Conference demonstrated that finfish farms could be installed, maintained and operated in the harshest oceanic conditions. The fish thrived in these conditions and, with appropriate system design and sound management and husbandry practices, the environmental impacts of the farms were seen to be acceptable or negligible.

It was agreed that:

Governments need to support the development of an offshore mariculture industry with enabling legislation (particularly to minimise the time and cost of the permissions process) and by providing suitable funding and support for continuing research and development into sustainable production and on-going measures to analyse and underwrite socio-economic considerations for local communities.

Specifically, for offshore mariculture, we need to support and develop:

• Technical advances that allow fully integrated operational farming systems that measure and optimise stock production in harsh sea conditions around the year while minimising risk to human operators 

• Cost-effective technologies for harvesting and processing stock to market 

• Transfer and adaptation of technologies from other offshore sectors where appropriate 

• Adequate onshore facilities including port facilities and siting for hatcheries 

• In common with other forms of aquaculture, there is need to develop feeding strategies that are recognised as sustainable 

• It was also suggested that, because of the scale of costs for offshore developments, larger enclosures may be more cost-effective and allow more room for reducing the stress on the farmed animals 

• There is also a need for a set of model guidelines for the establishment, location and husbandry of an offshore finfish farm that can be used by farmers to develop appropriate codes of practice for their operations.