Climate change and aquaculture: considering adaptation potential

Abstract

Increases in global population and seafood demand are occurring simultaneously with fisheries decline in an era of rapid climate change. Aquaculture is well positioned to help meet the world's future seafood needs, but heavy reliance of most global aquaculture on the ambient environment and ecosystem services suggests inherent vulnerability to climate change effects. There are, however, opportunities for adaptation. Engineering and management solutions can reduce exposure to stressors or mitigate stressors through environmental control. Epigenetic adaptation may have the potential to improve stressor tolerance through parental or early life stage exposure. Stressor-resistant traits can be genetically selected for, and maintaining adequate population variability can improve resilience and overall fitness. Information at appropriate time scales is crucial for adaptive response, such as real-time data on stressor levels and/or species' responses, early warning of deleterious events, or prediction of longer-term change. Diet quality and quantity have the potential to meet increasing energetic and nutritional demands associated with mitigating the effects of abiotic and biotic climate change stressors. Research advancements in understanding how climate change affects aquaculture will benefit most from a combination of empirical studies, modelling approaches, and observations at the farm level. Research to support aquaculture adaptation requires an increasing amount of environmental data to guide biological response studies for regional applications. Increased experimental complexity, resources, and duration will be necessary to better understand the effects of multiple stressors. Ultimately, in order for aquaculture sectors to move beyond short-term coping responses, governance initiatives incorporating the changing needs of stakeholders, users, and culture ecosystems as a whole are required to facilitate planned climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Advances in understanding the impacts of global warming on marine fishes farmed offshore: Sparus aurata as a case study

“…Consequently, we believe that farmed fish can be widely used as models to study seasonal fluctuations against which laboratory techniques and findings can be applied and interpreted, and moreover the validity of physiological concepts can be tested. Moreover, in the context of conservation and management of fish stocks, such biochemical and metabolic responses could be considered as early‐warning indicators, providing measurement endpoints for ecological risk assessment process and management in early warning ystems (Bueno & Soto, 2017; Reid et al ., 2019). Overall environmental conditions modulate gene expression, resulting in cell and organ metabolic and functional (biochemistry and physiology) changes, influencing whole‐animal metabolism and performance (physiology) and finally phenotypic changes ( e.g ., behaviour, feeding rate, growth, resistance to parasites).…”

Bio-sensing technologies in aquaculture: how remote monitoring can bring us closer to our farm animals

“…Most aquaculture operations are directly affected by the ambient environment and are to a varying extent reliant on ecosystem services (e.g. feed and adequate living conditions for farmed animals) [45]. The aquaculture industry is, therefore, vulnerable or susceptible to a wide range of environmental changes such as acute and chronic shifts in temperature, oxygen availability, salinity, eutrophication and pH [45,46].…”

When more is more: taking advantage of species diversity to move towards sustainable aquaculture

“…Thus, new technologies based on precision farming, using sensors, mathematical models, artificial intelligence, and information technology could help acquire and process information from animal‐production systems and to improve knowledge about, practices in, and ultimately the overall functioning of these systems (Føre et al ., 2018). These technologies could supplement modelling tools that currently exist or are under development (Ferreira, Saurel & Ferreira, 2012; Ren et al ., 2012), which are especially useful for complex systems (Reid et al ., 2019). Modelling would help design and set the size of the compartments of polyculture systems and consider the interactions (e.g.…”