THE AGE OF OCEAN FARMING

The future of mankind is inextricably related to Man's ability to overcome technological barriers to ensure the farming of the oceans rather than the exploitation of its resources. 

Oceans, seas and coastal areas form an integrated and essential component of the Earth’s ecosystem and are critical to sustainable development due its contribute towards poverty eradication by creating sustainable livelihoods and employment. Oceans are the primary regulator of the global climate, crucial for global food security and human health.

Hugo Metelo Diogo, Bluegrowth's Executive Director

According with the United Nations “Over three billion people depend on marine and coastal resources for their livelihoods”. Fishing operations have expanded to, quite literally, every corner of the ocean over the last 100 years, due to the fact that technology now exists that enables humans to find and catch every single fish in the oceans, no matter where they are located on the planet. However, the Commercial overexploitation of the world's fish stocks is severe," Ban Ki-moon said back in 2012. "Many species have been hunted to fractions of their original populations. More than half of global fisheries are exhausted, and a further third are depleted." According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 85 percent of global fish stocks are "overexploited, depleted, or recovering from depletion."

Fishermen around the world throw back more than seven million tons of unwanted sea life. Bycatch fatalities disrupt the delicate balance of the marine ecosystem, burden fishermen with extra work and unnecessary fines, and can lead to species extinction. For shrimpers, 80 percent of everything caught is bycatch and thrown back for dead. It is a mode of mass marine extinction. For decades environmentalists have fought to save our oceans from the perils of overfishing, climate change, and pollution. What if the question is not how to save the oceans, but how the oceans can save us? By 2050, the world population will have grown to over 9 billion people. At the same time, increased urbanisation and income growth are changing dietary preferences and increasing the demand for animal proteins. Aquaculture as a vital part of addressing this challenge in a sustainable manner due its potential to meet the protein needs of 500 million more people.

 “Aquaculture offers an increasingly attractive solution to meeting food needs. Aquaculture is already the fastest growing animal food producing sector, but the potential for further expansion is great. I do not ask you to change direction but I ask you to accelerate progress.”, Kofi Annan, Aquavision, 2012 

Fish farming should be recognized as a business quite distinct from the management of the wild fishery, and should be treated more like terrestrial livestock agriculture, especially regarding environmental concerns. Ocean farming is not a modern innovation. For thousands of year’s cultures as diverse as the ancient Egyptians, Romans, Aztecs, and Chinese have farmed finfish, shellfish, and aquatic plants. Atlantic salmon have been farmed in Scotland since the early 1600’s. The new “blue revolution,” has brought with it many of the warts of agriculture on land: habitat destruction, water pollution, and food-safety scares. The problem isn’t the ancient art of aquaculture per se; it’s the rapid intensification of it. Chinese farmers started raising carp in their rice fields at least 2,500 years ago. But with that country’s aquaculture output now at 42 million tons a year, fish pens line many rivers, lakes, and seashores. Farmers stock their ponds with fast-growing breeds of carp and tilapia and use concentrated fish feed to maximize their growth. In aquaculture, ecological sustainability and economic viability together lead to orderly growth.

Making a profit while in constant conflict within the community is surely just as destructive to aquaculture’s survival as is living harmoniously but without financial feasibility. Making profits it’s obviously a key ingredient for the success of any business, and it’s what keeps our economic engine running. You don’t put groceries on the table, pay taxes, employ workers, buy goods and services which employ other people, and on and on, if you are bankrupt. So what to do? Although it’s been said many times before, there needs to be increased co-operation between the public, private and university sectors in solving the challenges to success. We must have sensible regulatory controls based on logical risk/benefit analysis and a value-based decision making scheme that recognizes the necessity of making money in addition to managing the impacts of aquaculture. Heavy-handed regulators and a slow-moving government bureaucracy kill the entrepreneurial spirit and soften investors’ attitudes as much as a weak currency or an economic depression. It’s no co-incidence that the stock market reacts to shifts in government policy, because investors know that doing business in a province or country is heavily influenced by the political climate.

A smart governance approach based on monitoring instruments and cognitive systems are needed to support policy makers and regulatory authorities. The European governments should take the investment on ocean’s environmental surveillance seriously. This will require public investment not only in government infrastructures but also in grants and taxes incentives to mobilize the technological modernization of the private sector. On the other hand, the private sector needs to be reasonable in its demands from society, and must be internally vigilant to promote and maintain honest business practices, and to take seriously the need to manage and mitigate the ecological and community impacts of its farming practices, investing in technology and qualification of its professionals.

Aquaculture needs to move cautiously when deploying too much of its resources into untried or unproven technology, or diversifying into new species where the marketplace is largely unknown without a strong commitment of entrepreneurs with technological modernization including the investment on society literacy. Only with a critical mass will it be possible to optimize productive capacity in respect of the environment, society and profitably. Therefore, public and private organizations must to engage on harmonised approaches to implement smart governance and smart production instruments supported by scientific knowledge rather than industry complains our government pressure.

The challenge to develop the European aquaculture industries and protect the ecosystems could find the answer on emerging technologies that are being used on smart cities and, therefore, we need to commit the civil society on a large-scale brainstorming in order to bring the full potential of technologies already used for smart management of land-based challenges to the "Blue Championship".

About the Author

Hugo Metelo Diogo

Sailor, sail instructor, former member of the board of an ancient nautical club, Hugo Metelo Diogo accounts for twenty years of professional experience on ICT industries. In the last decade Hugo was 100% dedicated on technology innovation for marine, maritime and coastal economy. Has external consultant of the European Commission, Hugo was involve on several large scale international project with global impacts on Port’s and Shipping industry. From 2010 to 2015 he was Director of Glintt Inov where developed the first enterprise excellence center for Sea Economy recognised by the Science and Technology Ministry in 2012. He was director of Compta’s Sea Economy branch and currently is the Executive Director of Bluegrowth Company.