Aquaculture – the problems of solutions

Our oceans face a ton of problems. Coastal developments, shipping activities, oil and gas extraction, pollution, unsustainable fishing, and climate change. These are all major threats affecting our marine ecosystems and wildlife[1].

While there are many solutions to tackle those problems, I want to focus on unsustainable fishing. With depleting fish stocks and increasing demand for seafood, it is clear that we cannot rely on natural fisheries much longer, hence we developed aquaculture. While aquaculture can lighten the burden on natural fish stocks, it is not without its problems.

Problems of aquaculture include the destruction of coastal habitats to build these farms, ecological impacts of escaped farmed fish, and transfer of diseases from farmed fish to wildlife. Also, by farming seafood, we are not just concentrating a large population into a small area, but also the waste they release. Their wastes contain high amounts of nitrogen, which can result in oxygen depletion and hence loss in primary productivity of the natural ecosystems[2].

To solve these problems, there have been variations of aquaculture – integrated aquaculture, indoor aquaculture, and open-ocean aquaculture[3]. I am intrigued by the integrated aquaculture method, as it makes use of wildlife to naturally reduce some of the problems that aquaculture can bring, and yet at the same time bring more food to the table.

Integrated Aquaculture (Credit: OnHand Agrarian)
ps: check them out! It’s a Singapore company that creates sustainable food production solutions!

How is this related to Singapore, you may ask. We have fish farms too, more colloquially known as kelongs, and you can see some of them in the Straits of Johor just off the coast at Lim Chu Kang. As we begin to involve technology to increase our food supply, coupled with limited land space, we employed indoor aquaculture and took it to the next level, literally, with vertical aquaculture. One company working on this is Apollo Aquaculture, and they are currently building a vertical farm in Lim Chu Kang.

Prototype of a vertical aquaculture farm by Apollo Aquaculture (Credit: TODAY Singapore)

Indoor and vertical aquaculture has its benefits as stated above. However, are there other potential problems that may arise from this? One that I can think of is the high energy consumption along with the use of technology. High energy consumption is not a good thing; thus, the next step is to find new innovative solutions to reduce the energy consumption of these farms.

 

My point is this. No solution is perfect. A solution to a problem will often result in other unintended environmental consequences, just as how it is in aquaculture. The key here is that we must continue to innovate and develop new solutions to reduce any further impacts and be ready to answer other unintended consequences that the new development may bring.

The only fool-proof way, probably, is to go back into a primitive lifestyle, way before we evolved to who we are today, but I don’t think that will ever be done. I guess, then, all we can do is to continuously innovate and solve every problem that comes our way. After all, we evolved large brains, didn’t we?

 

SDG14: Life Below Water


References

[1] WWF. (n.d.). Threats to oceans and coasts. Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/our_focus/oceans_practice/problems/

[2] Greenberg, P. (2014, April 18). Environmental Problems of Aquaculture. Earth Journalism Network. https://earthjournalism.net/resources/environmental-problems-of-aquaculture

[3] Bourne, J. K., Jr. (n.d.). How to Farm a Better Fish. National Geographic. Retrieved October 16, 2020, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/aquaculture/

6 thoughts on “Aquaculture – the problems of solutions

  1. Hi Ernest,

    What an informative post, integrated aquaculture looks really interesting. For some reason it hasn’t been in the spotlight as much as compared to closed loop (which is currently mainy indoors but there are some pilot projects that are floating outdoors) and open- ocean aquaculture.

    It’s also interesting that you feel that if we cannot go back to a more primative lifestyle, then we can only look towards innovation. Would that include non-technology related developments that affects demand, and what do you think is the best/most realistic when it comes to meeting our nutritional requirements?

    Oh, you might be interested in my latest blog post (https://blog.nus.edu.sg/30x30ourhungerforfoodsecurity/2020/10/23/a-producers-perspective-barramundi-asia/) where I interviewed an local open ocean aquaculture firm. I learnt quite a bit about their efforts to limit excess nutriets and fish waste , as well as packaging waste. Shameless plug haha.

    Thanks!

    • Hi Ee Kin, thanks for reading!

      Before I reply to your questions, I just wanted to say that I was really surprised when you managed to get an interview with Kuhlbarra, so kudos to you 😀 For anyone reading this, do check out his post and interview!

      Yeap, integrated aquaculture isn’t in the spotlight much, but if I were to make a guess, it’s probably because a firm will tend to specialise in a certain type of product, and integrated aquaculture will involve farming of plants, fish, shellfish, or any other suitable seafood they wish to. Because of this, not many firms may choose to harvest such a large range of required aquatic life, and hence there isn’t much talk about it. Nevertheless, there are firms out there doing this, so it remains to be seen how the uptake of this solution will be in future.

      For the first part of your question, when I mentioned “innovation” in my post, I was referring to the technological side of things. If you have seen my reply to Rachel’s comment, I do feel that developments should tackle both the supply and demand side of things too. While the demand side of things includes technology-related developments such as improved energy efficiencies of certain products, non-technology-related developments such as behavioural and mindsets shifts are important as well. Equipping of important skillsets are also required to enable further development in both technology and education. Simply put, environmental studies is inter-disciplinary, and solutions to a certain issue must be multi-faceted in order to be more complete and holistic.

      Regarding what is the most realistic solution in meeting our nutritional requirements, in terms of aquaculture, I’m in between closed-containment and integrated aquaculture. Integrated because it makes use of natural processes to reduce impacts from aquaculture itself. However, the risks to the natural ecosystem and habitats that open-ocean has will apply here as well. Closed-containment will be a good idea as it eliminates the risks in open-ocean and integrated, and it can be employed in vertical fish farms just as how it is already being done in Singapore (see Apollo Aquaculture). However, the technology needed to maintain the water quality might be energy-intensive.

      Ideally speaking, maybe there can be a way to integrate both together to make use of natural processes to bring down the energy requirements, at the same time bringing more food to the table and eliminating any risks to the natural aquatic environment. It will be a tough innovation, but I am sure that with Singapore’s drive to be a leader in urban agriculture solutions, we will be able to develop innovative solutions to attain our 30 by 30 goal.

      Realistically speaking, it will be hard, hahaha, very hard. But we are working towards it and I am optimistic that our ideas will become reality.

      Thanks!

  2. Hi Ernest!

    It’s cool you brought up about open-ocean aquaculture! The closest I’ve been to sustainable fish farms would be my school’s indoor recirculating aquaculture system, and realised how high maintenance it was.

    I wonder if the any health implications of the open-ocean aquaculture to wildlife, other than the high-energy expenditure you mentioned. E.g the antibiotics given to the fishes in the farms.

    Cheers!
    Rachel Ong

    • Hi Rachel! Thanks for reading my post!

      The main benefit of open-ocean aquaculture is that being in the open ocean, there will be constant winds and strong currents to dilute the excess nutrients from feed or the wastes from the fish. However, these are still potential hazards to the health of the wildlife around the area. Other potential problems include escapes due to damaged nets or cages which can lead to the increased genetic diversity of populations in the wild, as well as exposure to new pathogens and parasites which can not only be transmitted within the farmed fish but potentially to wildlife in the area.

      It is worthy to note that although the concept of open-ocean aquaculture is not a new concept, it is still not as widely used as there are questions surrounding the possible environmental issues, some of those are stated above. Hence there are not many studies yet to prove or disprove anything.

      Hope this answers your question!

  3. Hi Ernest,

    Probably the only reliable thing we do as a species is to innovate hahaha. But as you have pointed out, it’s a neverending cycle, only we start at a situation worst off than the previous each time. Given that, and Jevon’s Paradox, do you think that our goal should be to innovate away our problems, or is innovation just to give us time before we kill ourselves off?

    Rachel Lim

    • Hi Rachel,

      Actually, I feel that with every new innovation, we start off better than how it was before, solving some problems in anticipation for the next. With Jevon’s Paradox, however, the improvements brought about by innovation increases the demand for that technology and associated resources, resulting in a net reversal in progress.

      Ultimately, innovation will solve and improve the way we currently do things. To avoid falling into the trap of Jevon’s Paradox, we will have to look at ourselves and question if we really need to increase the demand for that technology, whether the supply as it is right now is enough to sustain a liveable lifestyle. If we choose to live within our means and reduce consumption or at least keep it constant at where it is now, then with innovations that reduce our impacts, we will eventually see progress in our efforts to improve current conditions.

      Hope that answers your question!

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