Abstract
The growth of marine aquaculture over the 21st century is a promising venture for food security because of its potential to fulfill the seafood deficit in the future. However, to maximize the use of marine space and its resources, the spatial planning of marine aquaculture needs to consider the regimes of climate variability in the oceanic environment, which are characterized by large-amplitude interannual to decadal fluctuations. It is common to see aquaculture spatial planning schemes that do not take variability into consideration. This assumption may be critical for management and for the expansion of marine aquaculture, because projects require investments of capital and need to be profitable to establish and thrive. We analyze the effect of climate variability on the profitability of hypothetical mussel aquaculture systems in the Southern California Bight. Using historical environmental data from 1981 to 2008, we combine mussel production and economics models at different sites along the coast to estimate the Net Present Value as an economic indicator of profitability. We find that productivity of the farms exhibits a strong coherent behavior with marketed decadal fluctuations that are connected to climate of the North Pacific Basin, in particular linked to the phases of the North Pacific Gyre Oscillation (NPGO). This decadal variability has a strong impact on profitability both temporally and spatially, and emerges because of the mussels’ dependence on multiple oceanic environmental variables. Depending on the trend of the decadal regimes in mussel productivity and the location of the farms, these climate fluctuations will affect cost recovery horizon and profitability for a given farm. These results suggest that climate variability should be taken into consideration by managers and investors on decision making to maximize profitability.
Highlights
Aquaculture is a promising alternative to fulfill seafood consumption by 2050 (Diana et al, 2013) and it is predicted that about 60% of all seafood will come from aquaculture by 2030 (World-Bank, 2013)
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the United States (NOAA) indicates that imports comprised 90% of the seafood consumed in the United States in 2015 (NOAA, 2016) and about half of those imports come from aquaculture (NOAA, 2017)
Our climate sensitive analysis of productivity showed that the spatial heterogeneity of the Southern California Bight (SCB) as well as its climate regimes resulted in a variable panorama in production and profitability that raises questions on the use of constant environmental conditions in the spatial planning of aquaculture farms such as mussels
Summary
Aquaculture is a promising alternative to fulfill seafood consumption by 2050 (Diana et al, 2013) and it is predicted that about 60% of all seafood will come from aquaculture by 2030 (World-Bank, 2013). Marine aquaculture in particular is a promising sector because of the availability of space within countries’ Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) in comparison with other aquaculture sectors (Kapetsky et al, 2013; Lovatelli et al, 2013; Gentry et al, 2017a,b). This is especially true when moving further offshore because space is less limited than inshore environments (Gentry et al, 2017a,b) and the environmental impacts over the sea floor and sensitive environments such as coral reefs are reduced (Bostock et al, 2010). A National Marine Aquaculture Policy has been developed to plan the activity to have minimum impact over the ecosystems while fulfills its role as source of jobs and local sustainable seafood (NOAA, 2011)
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