Aquaculture is a human activity of rearing, breeding, and harvesting of aquatic species, including both animals and plants, in controlled aquatic environments like the oceans, lakes, rivers, ponds, and streams. It serves different purposes including food production, the building of aquariums, and fish cultures and habitat restoration. Aquaculture plays an important role in our daily life, but is it as sustainable as we think?

There are different types of aquaculture in general, mariculture is one of them. All the aquaculture that involves the use of seawater is a part of mariculture. The organisms bred in the seawater ranges from mollusks to seafood options like prawn and other shellfish, and even seaweed. I found a picture of how it works on Wikipedia:

We can see from the instruction of each part of the mariculture process that there are many risks in a basic mariculture system. For example, the fish sewage is so strongly gathered in one certain area that the diseases and pathogens may be transmitted through this process; and the seed stock also lay eggs with new diseases and parasites that might affect the other species and even the ecosystem. Overall, the mariculture is not very sustainable due to the waste from the cage cultures and the feeding material we use.

Another kind of aquaculture is called fish farming. It’s pretty similar to the mariculture because of the same method of keeping and controlling stock in some certain areas with pens or cages, while fish farming also include farming in fresh water or in ponds. A lot of people use this method to culture aquatic species in order to export them and get the most benefits. But as we see in the video of how salmon farming spreads the diseases and viruses from Norway to Canada coastal areas and causes a big amount of dying salmons, this is obviously not good for the sustainability of ecosystem around the culture areas. I think a way to solve this problem could be that the government can make some new policies of giving the sales more benefits by selling the fish in his own area. It can reduce the risk of transmitting diseases.

Algaculture is a type of aquaculture involving the cultivation of algae. It takes some chemical methods to harvest the algae which is a kind of photosynthesis microbial organism and it may be a finacial issue; however, it doesn’t have any disease spreading issue. Algae are the natural source of vital protein and Omega-3s; they can grow in brackish water without using fertile land. Algaculture is transitioning the world to a new way of sustainable food production. Scientists are also trying to make algae fuel to generate energy. This kind of aquaculture seems cleaner and more sustainable than the two above.

And there are more different kinds of aquaculrure such as flow-through system, closed recirculating system, etc. Generally speaking, aquaculture can be sustainable if it’s carried on in a recycable and ecologically friendly way, which creates few pollutions or diseases and small impact to the ecosystem; but with the most popular breeding and harvesting method we use right now, which is fish farming, the aquaculture can not be sustainable due to the influence it has to the water and other wild species around the farming area.