Site selection and carrying capacity in Mediterranean ... - FAO Sipam

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i) Initiatives in the framework of particular Mediterranean countries to determine
holding/carrying capacity by adapting production levels to the environmental
attributes of the receiving environment. Such initiatives, which exist in Greece and
Cyprus, use evaluation panels of international experts.
j) WGEIM is an ICES working group on environmental interactions of mariculture
(http://www.ices.dk/iceswork/wgdetail.asp?wg=WGEIM). Although not focused on
Mediterranean issues, this working group is one of the oldest initiatives addressing
the environmental impacts of aquaculture and has gone into considerable detail and
adopted a systematic approach mainly for the salmonid farming industry.
k) Other relevant projects include CANO CArrying capacity in NOrwegian aquaculture
(http://www.imr.no/cano/) which addresses questions that are of high relevance to
aquaculture in the Mediterranean, while the methodology used and problems
encountered should be taken into account for planning similar surveys in the
Mediterranean.
Finally, a relevant and important document is the one produced by IUCN titled ‘The IUCN
guide for the sustainable development of Mediterranean aquaculture: aquaculture site
selection and site management.’ 5 This document is reproduced in the present report as
Appendix 2.
2.7 List of key works on aquaculture-environment interactions from the Mediterranean
During the past 13 years there has been a spectacular increase in the number and quality of
published research results concerning aquaculture-environment interactions. A list of key
works dealing with aspects of aquaculture-environment interactions is given in Appendix 3.
Since a substantial amount of information is available, the focus of the list is on articles
published in peer reviewed journals and does not include other unpublished works such as
abstracts, reports and grey literature.
It has been just over 5 years since the report by Soto & Crosetti (2005) was published, which
includes a list of references to works on Mediterranean aquaculture and the environment yet,
in the meantime, there have been no less than 80 new papers published on the subject i.e. 29
in 2006, 35 in 2007, 20 in 2008, 26 in 2009, and 24 in 2010.
Amongst the 281 scientific articles (Appendix 3), 234 focus on fish farming (10 of which
focus on tuna farming) and 45 on shellfish or invertebrates (particularly oysters and mussels).
Most of the papers (>200) are related to aspects of the benthic environment and processes -
typically geochemical variables and macrofauna or meiofauna - but several articles (>50) also
deal with nutrients and/or plankton, effects on Posidonia oceanica meadows (>30) and
interactions with wild fish (30). The frequency of publications on the latter two aspects has
been relatively higher compared to previous years.
Some of the works listed in Appendix 3 have used recently developed techniques (bioassays,
stable isotopes) or other specialised tools (meta-analysis etc) to address specific questions
regarding different processes or different scales or to propose new monitoring methods. Issues
such as recovery following cessation of fish farming, mitigation techniques, effects of
offshore aquaculture, as well as some of the models developed, are probably of global interest
since they are among the very first works to be published on such topics.
5 IUCN 2009. Guide for the sustainable development of Mediterranean aquaculture.n.2 Aquaculture
site selection and site management. Gland, Switzerland and Malaga, Spain: IUCN, VIII+303p 5