Environmental, economic, and social sustainability in aquaculture: the aquaculture performance indicators.

Aquaculture is a rapidly growing food production technology, but there are significant concerns related to its environmental impact and adverse social effects. We examine aquaculture outcomes in a three pillars of sustainability framework by analyzing data collected using the Aquaculture Performance Indicators. Using this approach, comparable data has been collected for 57 aquaculture systems worldwide on 88 metrics that measure social, economic, or environmental outcomes. We first examine the relationships among the three pillars of sustainability and then analyze performance in the three pillars by technology and species. The results show that economic, social, and environmental outcomes are, on average, mutually reinforced in global aquaculture systems. However, the analysis also shows significant variation in the degree of sustainability in different aquaculture systems, and weak performance of some production systems in some dimensions provides opportunity for innovative policy measures and investment to further align sustainability objectives.

The Covid-19 impacts on the European Union aquaculture sector.

There have been a number of indications of strong negative impacts of Covid-19 and the preventive measures associated with the pandemic for all food sectors. However, there is increasing evidence that the picture is quite nuanced where the Covid related measures are creating challenges for some and opportunities for others. In this paper we investigate the impacts of Covid-19 on the aquaculture sector in the European Union using two approaches; a survey where industry representatives and experts assess the impacts on key economic indicators allowing for positive as well as negative impacts, and recently published aquaculture production data for Denmark and Spain. Our findings show that surveys' results indicate that, on average, the impact of Covid-19 is negative on the income side, increasing cost and therefore negative with respect to profit. However, in every category the average covers both positive and negative answers suggesting that what was a challenge for some was a window of an opportunity for others. The production data for Denmark and Spain also indicate moderate to no impacts of the Covid-19. The strongest impacts appear on the turbot prices, a species where highly dependent on higher end restaurants. The lower price is a clear indication that there was a significant opportunity cost associated with getting access to other supply chains, particularly as the quantity was also moderately down.

Where did the vessels go? An analysis of the EU fishing fleet gravitation between home ports, fishing grounds, landing ports and markets.

The mobile nature of fishing activity entails dynamic spatial relations and dependencies between coastal communities and fishing grounds drawn by the movement of fishing vessels. Analysing these spatial relations is essential to allocate the socio-economic impact of the fishing activity into the relevant coastal communities. In addition, such spatial information gives the possibility, on the one hand, to assess the impacts from fisheries on the marine environment and, on the other, to manage competing uses of the sea space between different activities. In this paper, we use AIS data, which is individual vessels' positioning data, to examine the activity of the EU large-scale fishing fleets, their home ports, high intensity fishing areas (i.e., main fishing grounds), main ports and coastal communities involved.

Characterising investments in EU fisheries and defining their desirability.

In most economic sectors, increases in capital (i.e., investments) are often considered virtuous, indicating confidence in the future and expected growth. In fisheries, however, investments are often harmful, as they may lead to increases in fleet capacity, which is not desirable considering the fully exploited or overexploited status of most fish stocks (natural capital), and the dissipation of the resource rent (overcapitalisation). In the EU, the number of fishing vessels have been decreasing for many years, but the fishing capacity is often claimed to have increased. In other words, there are less vessels, but the remaining ones have a higher fishing capacity. In this study, we analyse the evolution of the EU fishing industry's investments for the period 2008-2016, and whether these investments have been beneficial. Results show that despite the overall decrease in the number of vessels and their average value, investments in some fleets have increased. Moreover, investment decisions (i.e., whether to invest or disinvest) have been more accurate in recent years, leading to a better economic performance. However, results vary by the scale of the fishing activity (small-scale and large scale fleets) and sea basin (Northeast Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea).

Global seafood consumption footprint.

To ensure food security and nutritional quality for a growing world population in the face of climate change, stagnant capture fisheries production, increasing aquaculture production and competition for natural resources, countries must be accountable for what they consume rather than what they produce. To investigate the sustainability of seafood consumption, we propose a methodology to examine the impact of seafood supply chains across national boundaries: the seafood consumption footprint. The seafood consumption footprint is expressed as the biomass of domestic and imported seafood production required to satisfy national seafood consumption, and is estimated using a multi-regional input output model. Thus, we reconstruct for the first time the global fish biomass flows in national supply chains to estimate consumption footprints at the global, country and sector levels (capture fisheries, aquaculture, distribution and processing, and reduction into fishmeal and fish oil) taking into account the biomass supply from beyond national borders.