SUSTAINable AQUAculture in the North: identifying thresholds, indicators and tools for future growth

Informations

Funding country

Norway

Acronym

-

URL

-

Start date

1/1/2017

End date

12/31/2020

Budget

1,061,736 EUR

Fundings

Abstract

The Norwegian salmon farming industry is predicted to grow substantially, especially in the less developed region of Northern Norway. It is critical for the national economy, the global reputation of the industry and the environment that this is planned, managed effectively and truly sustainable. The benthic environments in these Northern regions are thought to comprise predominantly hard and mixed bottom habitats. Unlike soft-sediment habitats, mixed and hard-bottom habitats are poorly studied and there is no established approach for monitoring aquaculture related effects. This situation is compounded by a lack of basic information about the specific organisms that are present, and their spatial distribution. Thus, there is a clear and pressing need to increase our knowledge about potential interactions between farm wastes and the mixed- and hard-bottom habitats of Northern Norway. The ?StustainAqua? project studied the environmental tolerances of some of the dominant and potentially important marine fauna of these habitats (e.g. sponges, corals, anemones etc.). The goals were to identify alternative biological indicators of ecosystem effects, to facilitate the development of a defensible method for environmental monitoring. Two alternate approaches were explored; one based on visual indicators of enrichment, and the other utilising modern next-generation sequencing techniques (environmental DNA) to examine both the veneer of mobile sediments that overlies most hard substrates, and the changes to the microbiomes of specific taxa in response to enrichment. The latter was achieved by conducting a translocation experiment with four species cultured in strategic proximities to a salmon farm. This project also aimed to increase capability for predicting the spatial extent of effects so that impacts to ecologically sensitive or valuable habitats can be avoided by developing new model input parameters and then improving and testing two of Norway's leading depositional models. The study effectively characterized epifauna communities found in the Altafjord area and in the process, developed a new cost-effective method for quantitative video surveys of benthic communities. Resulting data were then used used to describe ecological responses to waste, and to identify several useful indicator species. Four epifauna species targeted for translocation (Hormathia digitata, Craniella sp., Drifa florida, Polymastia sp.) revealed some potentially useful stress indicators that can be used to detect sublethal effects (i.e., signs of impact before the individuals are lost). An innovative substrate-independent benthic sampler (?SIBS?) was developed to sample directly from hard substrates which is proving capable of clearly elucidating organic enrichment gradients and should contribute significantly toward solving ?the hard-bottom problem?. Salmon feces decay and pellet break up experiments were conducted which yielded new input parameters for depositional models, which have been constructed for the three main study farms.