Changes of the Mediterranean fish farm sector towards a more sustainable approach: A closer look at temporal, spatial and technical shifts

Abstract

The Mediterranean is a miniature of the world with 22 countries sharing the its coastline. In the past few decades aquaculture production in Mediterranean showed an increasing trend but brought with it several environmental and socio-economic issues. In order to establish sustainable development, the Mediterranean aquaculture sector has adopted integrated management plans. Within this framework, our aim was to evaluate the state of the Mediterranean aquaculture industry with respect to sustainable growth, focusing mostly on the spatial scale. We used the evaluation framework for ICZM proposed by Billé (2007) that takes into consideration how multiple policies can be accountable for sustainable management practices. In order to identify the different management regimes and trends in the area, satellite images were processed as a diagnostic tool to locate and analyse the characteristics of the Mediterranean fish farms in cages over time. Google Earth historical images were used to map the characteristics of the Mediterranean fish farms in three different periods between 2006 and 2017. The average coastal surface occupied by the fish cages in the Mediterranean was 0.01%; only two countries currently exceed this percentage due to having a large number of cages (Turkey and Greece) and five others due to their limited coastline. In total, 15,499 cages were counted in recent years in the Mediterranean area, 46.5% of them belonging to larger cluster aggregations. Over time, square steel cages have been gradually replaced by larger and technically more advanced circular cages that significantly increased the finfish production rates. To understand the level of integration done by Mediterranean aquaculture we examined four dimensions of aquaculture issues: (i) policy and management; (ii) environment; (iii) economy - industry and (iv) social. State-of-the-art aquaculture policy and management systems were integrated in national legislations, boosting the production, ensuring at the same time better environmental quality from and for the aquaculture. Despite these positive results for the Mediterranean aquaculture industry, other factors, such as social issues related with the general bad image of aquaculture and the conflicts with local stakeholders, seem to inhibit the further development of aquaculture production. Thus, studies like this can identify factors that have favoured the expansion of aquaculture but also the evolving needs of the stakeholders in the context of changing market and social conditions.