Life cycle assessment of tiger puffer (Takifugu rubripes) farming: A case study in Dalian, China

Abstract

In China, energy consumption and carbon emission by the aquaculture industry have become major problems. The tiger puffer (Takifugu rubripes) is an emerging aquaculture species in China, but its environmental impact during the farming process has not yet been evaluated systematically. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first life cycle assessment (LCA) of tiger puffer land-sea relay strategy in Dalian, China. To analyze the environmental impact of the tiger puffer farming process, the following four stages were considered: seed rearing, deep-sea cage farming-1, industrial recirculating aquaculture, and deep-sea cage farming-2. The LCA software GaBi 10.5 academy version and CML-IA-Jan. 2016-world method were used to calculate the environmental impacts. According to the LCA results, marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential was the largest contributor to the environmental impact, and industrial recirculating aquaculture was the largest farming stage in the whole tiger puffer farming process. Energy in the form of electricity, coal, and gasoline was consumed to maintain the power supply in the tiger puffer farming process, and it was a key factor that influenced the environmental performance. Based on the sensitivity and energy analyses, energy consumption for equipment operation at the industrial recirculating aquaculture stage, feed consumption, and gasoline consumption for transportation at the deep-sea cage farming-2 stage need to be carefully considered. The following improvement measures were suggested to improve the environmental performance of tiger puffer farming and the aquaculture industry: establish electricity, wind power, and solar energy integrated management systems; ex-ante LCA for parameter optimization in future technology research and development; and new production strategies such as aquaponics and integrated multi-trophic aquaculture. Moreover, life cycle inventory (LCI) of tiger puffer land-sea relay farming was established to obtain essential information, enrich aquaculture LCI databases, and support aquaculture LCA research.