Evaluating the Environmental Conditions Required for the Development of Offshore Aquaculture

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Aquaculture is the cultivation of aquatic organisms, usually for the purposes of human consumption. Worldwide, fish and shellfish consumption is expanding. Globally wild fish stocks are in decline and aquaculture is rapidly growing in importance. Aquaculture production will continue to support the increasing human demand for seafood to feed both mass and quality markets in different regions of the world.Aquaculture is an increasingly important industry for the UK with exports worth in excess of £500 million. Most UK aquaculture occurs on the Scottish West coast with the dominant cultivated species being Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) which accounts for 98% of Scottish marine finfish aquaculture. The industry has an export value in excess of £500 million and employs more than 8,000 people mostly in remote locations where other job opportunities are scarce. Currently most aquaculture production occurs in fjordic sea lochs that provides relatively sheltered conditions for the farms. Industry and government have a desire to expand aquaculture production in Scotland but the opportunity to increase capacity within the sea loch environment in limited. Barriers to further expansion include planning issues, the transfer of parasitic sea lice that negatively impact fish health from one site to another, biomass limits imposed by the environmental regulator SEPA to minimise chemical and particulate impact, and the impact of fish killing harmful algal blooms that can be particularly acute in restricted exchange environments such as fjords. The fish farming industry also faces an ongoing battle with environmental campaigners who fear that intensive farming in lochs and fjords is damaging to wild stocks and ecosystems.The development of aquaculture in "offshore" environments outside of sea lochs offers a potential route for the sustainable expansion of the industry. Such locations are still within the coastal marine environment but in more open and exposed water. More dispersive open environments potentially minimise the problems outlined above with the potential for larger farms with reduced inter connectivity and environmental impact. However, these more exposed environments will carry their own risks, for example in terms of potential storm damage. To proceed with the development of offshore aquaculture a better scientific understanding of its potential benefits is therefore required. To achieve this, this project will use a combination of experimental observation at existing and proposed fish farm locations of contrasting exposure, along with previously unavailable industry data to validate existing and new physical and biological mathematical models. These models will then be used to evaluate the potential to reduce sea lice infections, the harmful algal bloom risk, the risk of equiment failure and the impact on farmed fish health of operation in more energetic environments.