Forty years ago, Patrick Sorgeloos attended his first international aquaculture conference in Charleston, S.C., and he has been active player on the global scene ever since. The Ghent University professor is a leader on many aspects of aquaculture, including fish and shellfish larviculture, live food production, international cooperation, and sustainability issues. He was an apt choice to open Aquaculture America 2014, which stressed so many of these themes. The event, held in Seattle Feb. 9-12, is the largest aquaculture conference in the Western hemisphere.
Sorgeloos’ plenary address, “Aquaculture: The Blue Biotechnology of the Future,” began by documenting aquaculture’s phenomenal growth, especially compared with capture fisheries, which has flatlined ever since the 90s. In 2011 aquaculture, the world’s fastest growing food-production industry, yielded almost 84 million metric tons of food, including seaweed, worth USD 135.5 billion (EUR 98.9 billion). Nearly 90 percent of the product came from Asia.
Sorgeloos went on to look at different culture systems and compare industrial and traditional aquaculture. The latter produces food mainly for local consumption, is often integrated with other terrestrial plant and animal production, and is low-tech and ecologically benign in that it mostly uses local resources. In contrast, industrial aquaculture is mostly monocultural, profit- and technology-driven, and has detrimental environmental impacts.
The biggest challenge the industry faces is increasing demand for healthy and affordable seafood spurred by the growing world population. Ten years from now, aquaculture will need to produce 50 percent more per year than current annual production to meet expected per capita consumption needs. Now the seas, which cover more than 70 percent of the earth, produce less than 2 percent of our food needs. Sorgeloos said that before long, we will witness a significant shift to farming the oceans for food, fuel, pharmaceuticals, and other products.
Integrated Aquaculture
The need for more integrated production systems for plant and animal farming is a priority, Sorgeloos told the more than 1,800 attendees from 54 countries. Coastal and offshore farms will play an increasingly important role. He touted integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, or IMTA, for food production and bioremediation and cited Chinese efforts to maximize nutrient recycling for different niches of the ecosystem: fish, shellfish, and seaweeds. Even wind, wave, and thermal energy generation can be built into the system.
In his talk and during an interview afterward, Sorgeloos stressed two main themes: sustainability and cooperation with Asia. He said, “Just as with terrestrial farming, many of our standard and ‘successful’ aquaculture practices are not sustainable. The feed ingredients we use or our environmental impacts, such as eutrophication from our wastes, are examples. We need to develop innovative integration practices that make managing waste cost-effective and ultimately even profitable. This will be accomplished through a step-by-step multidisciplinary approach with sincere stakeholder interaction.”
Sorgeloos emphasized the need to rethink how we manage waste, saying, “We cannot simply keep treating it. We need to adjust our monoculture approach and build integrated systems. The salmon farmers and other growers know they will have to do this eventually, but since they operate on such small margins, they can’t do it now. Tax credits and incentives are needed.” Sorgeloos cited the example presented at the conference of New Hampshire providing financial support for such transitions.
Despite serious problems remaining to be addressed, aquaculture is making real progress Sorgeloos said, citing a more than 50 percent decline in the use of fishmeal in aquatic feeds over the last 20 years. He advocated full independence from fisheries stocks for lipid and protein ingredients in aquatic feeds…
Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com
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