Mariculture: significant and expanding cause of coastal nutrient enrichment

By L. Bouwman, Arthur H. W. Beusen, P. Glibert, C. Overbeek, M. Pawłowski, Jorge A. Herrera, S. Mulsow, Rencheng Yu, Ming-jiang Zhou. 2013

160 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mariculture (marine aquaculture) generates nutrient waste either through the excretion by the reared organisms, or through direct enrichment by, or remineralization of, externally applied feed inputs. Importantly, the waste from fish or shellfish cannot easily be managed, as most is in dissolved form and released directly to the aquatic environment. The release of dissolved and particulate nutrients by intensive mariculture results in increasing nutrient loads (finfish and crustaceans), and changes in nutrient stoichiometry (all mariculture types). Based on different scenarios, we project that nutrients from mariculture will increase up to six fold by 2050 with exceedance of the nutrient assimilative capacity in parts of the world where mariculture growth is already rapid. Increasing nutrient loads and altered nutrient forms (increased availability of reduced relative to oxidized forms of nitrogen) and/or stoichiometric proportions (altered nitrogen:phosphorus ratios) may promote an increase in harmful algal blooms (HABs) either directly or via stimulation of algae on which mixotrophic HABs may feed. HABs can kill or intoxicate the mariculture product with severe economic losses, and can increase risks to human health.

Subfields: Aquatic Science, Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/89dbbed60f05b414f6951f54f100609d769f3920

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Global and Planetary Change

1. D. Sobota
2. P. Glibert

In Oceanography

1. L. Bouwman
2. R. Maranger
3. D. Sobota
4. P. Glibert
5. J. Burkholder
6. T. Kana

Citations in the corpus

• The Haber Bosch–harmful algal bloom (HB–HAB) link (2014, background): “Coastal N release from Chinese mariculture increased from 2000 to 2010 by 45% on average and up to 63% in some provinces while P increase was only 37% (Bouwman et al 2013).”
• Nitrogen use in the global food system: past trends and future trajectories of agronomic performance, pollution, trade, and dietary demand (2016, background): “…errors caused by this are small, because currently the volume of compound feeds used in aquaculture (Tacon and Metian 2008) is minor compared to feed crop use in livestock (FAO 2012) and because a large part of the world’s seafood consumption comes from direct capture (Bouwman et al 2013b).”