Taxonomy of Means and Ends in Aquaculture Production—Part 1: The Functions

Abstract

Abstract:The aquaculture sector has been increasing its share in the total fish production in the world. Numerous studies have been published about aquaculture, introducing a variety of techniques and methods that have been applied or could be applied in aquaculture production systems. The purpose of this study is to present a systemic overview of the functions of aquaculture production systems. Each function of an aquaculture system is applied to carry out a certain purpose. The results are divided into three sets of functions: input, treatment, and output. Input functions deal with what happens before the rearing area, treatment functions are about what happens inside the rearing area, and output functions is what comes out of the system. In this study, five input functions, ten treatment functions, and five output functions are indentified. For each function the controlling parameters or indicators were identified and then a list of possible methods or technological solutions in order to carry out the function was compiled. The results are presented in a system map that aggregates all functions used in different types of aquaculture systems along with their methods of solution. This is the first of four articles that together generate taxonomy of both means and ends in aquaculture. The aim is to identify both the technical solutions (means) that solve different functions (ends) and the corresponding functions. This article is about the functions.

Taxonomy of Means and Ends in Aquaculture Production—Part 3: The Technical Solutions of Controlling N Compounds, Organic Matter, P Compounds, Metals, Temperature and Preventing Disease

“…This is done with a comprehensive literature review on the basis on of keywords generated in the previous work by Björnsdóttir et al [1]. The scope, execution of the literature review and the synthesis are described in the next couple of sections.…”

“…The coverage of the article is limited to the functions identified by Björnsdóttir et al [1]. Only a general description of the technical solutions is given here.…”

“…This is done to facilitate design information sharing, formalizing the design approach with the aim to, in the future, be able to create an aquaculture engineering design methodology. This research builds on Björnsdóttir et al [1] and uses the transformation view of aquaculture production [1], that is input, treatment and output functions. The treatment functions are: controlling temperature, solids, dissolved gasses (DO and CO 2 ), pH, nitrogen (N) compounds, organic matter, phosphorus (P) compounds, metals, disease outbreak along with the function of preventing diseases.…”

Taxonomy of Means and Ends in Aquaculture Production—Part 4: The Mapping of Technical Solutions onto Multiple Treatment Functions

“…The treatment functions are [3]: controlling temperature, solids, dissolved gasses (dissolved oxygen DO and CO 2 ), pH (along with alkalinity and hardness), N compounds, organic matter, P compounds, metals, disease outbreak along with the function of preventing diseases. The treatment function of controlling disease outbreak is out of the scope.…”

“…In the previous three papers, the authors identified all of the possible functions needed in a aquaculture production system. They also list the key variables that have to be monitored and collected all of the methods that solve the functions [3]. One part of the functions, the treatments, were then analyzed and all technical solutions to each method categorized into a taxonomy of technical solutions [4,5].…”