Resource Use in Mariculture: A Case Study in Southeastern China

Abstract

China is the biggest provider of aquaculture products, and the industry is still growing rapidly. Further development of the sector will affect the provision of ecosystem services that maintain the livelihood of local populations. In particular, the current size and growth rate of China’s mariculture has raised many environmental concerns, but very few studies of this sector have been conducted to date. Here, we report the resource use in the production of six main Chinese mariculture products (Larimichthys crocea, Apostichopus japonicus, Haliotis spp., Laminaria japonica, Gracilaria spp., Porphyra spp.), taking the city of Ningde as a case study. We used the life cycle assessment framework and the Cumulated Exergy Demand indicator to quantify resource use, and implemented a Monte Carlo simulation where model uncertainty was included using various methods. The mean exergy demand values of the production of one live-weight ton of large yellow croaker, sea cucumber, abalone, laminaria, gracilaria, and porphyra are 106 GJ eq., 65 GJ eq., 126 GJ eq., 0.25 GJ eq., 1.55 GJ eq., and 0.98 GJ eq., respectively. For animal products, 45–90% of the impacts come from the feed requirements, while in seaweed production, 83–99% of the impacts are linked to the fuel used in operation and maintenance activities. Policies oriented toward efficient resource management in the mariculture sector thus should take the farm design, input management, and spatial planning of marine areas as the main targets to guide current practices into more sustainable ones in the future. Improvements in all those aspects can effectively increase resource efficiency in local mariculture production and additionally reduce other environmental impacts both locally and globally.

Farming fish in the sea will not nourish the world

“…Third, life cycle assessment studies show consistently that the most significant adverse environmental impacts of fed aquaculture in both marine and freshwater environments derive from the global effects of feed production 61,62 . Recent mariculture literature tends to view land use and freshwater consumption primarily as a question of direct on-farm utilization.…”

Spatiotemporal dynamics of coastal aquaculture and driving force analysis in Southeastern China

“…Particularly, existing studies often focus on local impacts and ignore spillover effects in the regional, national, and even global scales (Liu et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2016). However, coastal and marine aquaculture involves many telecoupled processes (e.g., feed import, seafood export, and worker migration) whose impacts are so influential and cannot be neglected (Marin et al, 2019). Finally, systematical spatial planning and monitoring of coastal and marine land use is urgently needed.…”

The Effect of Marine Pastures on Green Aquaculture in China

“…Under the trend of increasingly scarce fishing resources, mariculture plays an indispensable role in ensuring national food security and improving the national dietary structure [1,2]. However, while China's mariculture has made remarkable achievements, there are also a series of environmental and resource problems, such as the irrational utilization of mariculture resources [3][4][5], reduction in mariculture area [6][7][8], and increasing carbon emissions and nitrogen and phosphorus pollutant emissions from mariculture [9]. Vigorously promoting the green development of mariculture in China is not only of great significance to the high-quality development of China's marine economy, but also has a profound impact on the realization of the dual carbon goal.…”