Month: February 2021

Aquaculture in the countries bordering the Mediterranean and the Black Sea has grown substantially over the past decades, helping meet the rising demand for fishery products and contributing to increasing food security, employment and economic development in the region. However, this rapid expansion in some cases not well planned, has caused concerns about environmental impact, competitions with other local activities, human health and social issues.

Social acceptability refers to the degree to which aquaculture activities are accepted or precluded by the public at large. Social acceptability is also a key driver for sustainable aquaculture development and understanding the drivers that influence it could help unlock the aquaculture development potential and establish sustainable models that could contribute to the building of consensus around aquaculture activities.Continue reading

The evaluation of aquaculture performance is a difficult task as full-scale aquaculture production is affected by numerous parameters, such as structure and size of culture units, environmental conditions (temperature, water flow, winds, fouling, etc.), husbandry (feed and feedig pracices, fish handling, monitoring, etc.), which are very difficult to be mimicked at reseach scale. The evaluation of performance should be addressed with a multidisciplinary approach, difficult to be mimicked at research scale, and very expensive at a pilot or commercial scale. Consequently, the evaluation of causes behind a poor zootechnical performance is a very difficult objective for aquaculture managers, as the above mentioned parameters are interrelated and the sector operates with low profitability margins and on a highly competitive international scale.

There is a need for the sector to develop methodologies for the comparison of zootechnical performance among fish farms, which could facilitate decision making towards the implementation of more efficient and sustainable management practices. Considering the information previously gathered by MedAID regarding feeding practices designed along different tasks in WP2, a large case study was designed in two different sites located along the Mediterranean basin.Continue reading