Abstract
Mariculture production increased significantly in recent years due to global rise in human population. However, in addition to providing food, fish farms are also a source of nutrients and antibiotics to the water column. Here, we research the nutrient pollution originating from fish cages in the Eastern Mediterranean by utilizing a Lagrangian modeling approach that followed trajectories of the water parcels. The effects of farm size and the farm’s distance from the shoreline were included in the model, and biological uptake and sinking of nutrients were incorporated into the analysis. By using computations of back-trajectories examining the water origin of strategically important shoreline areas, such as desalination plants, we were able to identify which of the proposed farm locations were potentially harmful. The results suggest that remotely-located, smaller and spatially distant farms are more preferable to limit the nutrient and antibiotic effluent resulting from mariculture activity.
Highlights
Global marine fishing is expanding into previously unexploited areas as the fish yields in existing areas are depleted by overfishing (Jackson et al, 2001; Cheung et al, 2007; Froese et al, 2008; Swartz et al, 2010)
We investigated the effect of fish farms at different distances from the shoreline
Since currents behave differently dependent on season and as a function of the distance from the shoreline, the location of a fish farm will affect its nutrient distribution
Summary
Global marine fishing is expanding into previously unexploited areas as the fish yields in existing areas are depleted by overfishing (Jackson et al, 2001; Cheung et al, 2007; Froese et al, 2008; Swartz et al, 2010). This is due to more efficient fishing technology and the rise in human population that causes an increased requirement for food resources (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). Mariculture in sea cages can cause environmental damage in terms of: loss of natural habitats (Beveridge, 2001; Holmer et al, 2008), inadequate waste treatment (Wu, 1995), antibiotic discharge to the environment (Cabello, 2003), abundant use of marine fish in fishmeal (Sanchez-Jerez et al, 2011), transfer of pathogens from farmed to wild populations (Mladineo, 2007), effect of genetic exchange between wild and farmed populations (Grigorakis, 2010), and competition for resources between native and escaped fish (Karakassis et al, 2000; Holmer, 2010; Grigorakis and Rigos, 2011; Aguado-Gimenez and Ruiz-Fernandez, 2012)
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