A novel approach to evaluate potential risk of organic enrichment in marine aquaculture farms: a case study in Sanggou Bay

Abstract

A novel approach was proposed to evaluate the potential risk of organic enrichment in marine aquaculture farms without obvious environmental degradation. The approach was based on historical environmental records preserved in sediment cores, and potential risk of organic enrichment can be effectively evaluated by comparing burial fluxes of marine organic carbon (OC) during times before and after large-scale aquaculture. A case study was conducted in Sanggou Bay. The change trends on burial fluxes of organic carbon in sediment over the past 150 years were rebuilt. OC burial fluxes have greatly increased since the beginning of large-scale aquaculture in 1980s, reaching 16.0~16.5 times higher than that before large-scale aquaculture. The results indicate that aquaculture activities have resulted in obvious accumulation of aquacultural organic matters, although sedimental environment has not degraded seriously. Besides, if the OC burial fluxes further increase to 3.5~7.0 times higher than that in present, sedimental environment may degrade obviously. Therefore, potential risks of organic enrichment still exist with aquaculture development in Sanggou Bay.

Physico-Chemical and Ecotoxicological Evaluation of Marine Sediments Contamination: A Case Study of Rovinj Coastal Area, NE Adriatic Sea, Croatia

“…In general, total PCB concentrations detected in the southern Adriatic Sea were comparable to those detected in deep sediments (>620 m) of the eastern Mediterranean [83] and in coastal waters of Spain [84,85]. Total PCB concentrations in sediment cores collected near the Po delta were similar to those found in the northern Adriatic Sea [75,86], but lower than in more industrialized and urbanized areas, such as the Mar Piccolo of Taranto [56], the East China Sea [87,88], the Baltic Sea [89] and the Bizerte Lagoon in Tunisia [90].…”

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“…There is evidence of sediment accumulation and organic carbon enrichment under fed finfish mariculture net pens (figure 1 ; Carroll et al 2003 , Holmer et al 2005 , Tanner and Fernandes 2010 , Yang et al 2018 ), which is potentially significant in terms of sediment carbon sequestration (MacLeod et al 2019 ). However, the spatial extent and magnitude of this process and whether it leads to meaningful increases in sediment organic carbon stocks are poorly studied and difficult to quantify (Henriksson et al 2014a , 2014b ).…”