Oceans could provide far more protein for the world’s food supply than they do now, especially from aquaculture, but aggressive action is needed to better manage fisheries and mitigate the impact of climate change, according to two reports released Thursday. The papers were commissioned by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, an international research and policy body comprised of world leaders working on oceans policy.
One of the reports, The Future of Food from the Sea, says that oceans have “the potential to play a much more significant role through increased mariculture (i.e., aquaculture that occurs in the sea) production and, to a lesser extent, traditional capture fisheries production.” The report’s authors argue that with appropriate fisheries management and “judicious conservation,” oceans can produce more food and provide more income for many countries around the world.
Presenters discussing the reports at the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C., said oceans should be explored for their potential to increase food production.
“There are all kinds of challenges associated with increasing food on land,” Christopher Costello, a professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara and co-author of the report, said at the launch event. “Environmental externalities like carbon emissions, land use challenges, water use. The question is, can food from the sea fill this gap, this increasing demand for nutritious food?”
These researchers believe it can. Currently, food from the ocean represents about 16 percent of the animal protein consumed globally, and about 80 percent of that portion is wild-caught seafood. The report’s authors suggest that under “optimistic projections” of ocean aquaculture, the ocean could supply “over six times more food than it does today (364 million metric tons of animal protein). This represents more than two-thirds of the edible meat that the (UN FAO) estimates will be needed to feed the future global population.”
The second report, The Expected Impacts of Climate Change on the Ocean Economy, discusses how climate change will affect wild fisheries, ocean aquaculture, and tourism, using several projections of global temperatures. Warming has already altered “ocean climate, chemistry, circulation, sea level, and ice distribution,” the report said, affecting the habitats, species, and productivity of the sea. All countries in the world “stand to gain significant benefits relative to a business-as-usual trajectory by implementing climate-adaptive fisheries management reforms that address both changes in species’ distributions and productivities due to climate change.”
The report’s authors also emphasize the role of ocean aquaculture in future management of the ocean, particularly for countries that stand to lose tremendously from the collapse of coral reefs and other sites of ocean tourism.
“There is very high confidence that even if we limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius from the pre-industrial era, coral reefs will still experience very high risk from global warming,” said Reniel Cabral, also of the University of California-Santa Barbara and co-author of the climate report, at the event. But even under projections of rising global temperatures, “with careful planning, mariculture could offset losses in food and income from capture fisheries in those countries that will experience losses in that sector,” said the report.
Ocean aquaculture is a controversial topic. Some experts say the practice exposes wild species to disease, puts workers at risk, and encourages privatization of the ocean. “We must be mindful of the serious trade-offs involved when we place these operations in open water,” Hallie Templeton, senior oceans campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said of the two reports’ recommendations. She noted that several countries that have adopted open-ocean aquaculture have since scaled back or halted those operations because of environmental concerns.
The U.S. debate over ocean aquaculture could come to a head later this month. The EPA will hold a hearing on Jan. 28 about a permit the agency issued last year for a pilot aquaculture program in federal waters off the coast of Florida. The pilot pen would hold 20,000 longfin yellowtail. Critics of the project have warned that it favors one company over the health of the oceans, and could pose a threat to independent fishers in the region.
The planet’s oceans have already warmed substantially as a result of rising global temperatures. At the end of this century, oceans are “likely to have warmed by two to four times … as much as the warming observed since 1970,” the climate report said. This warming has already had a devastating effect on ocean species, tropical storms, and sea ice.
Both reports released Thursday call for cross-border, international efforts to coordinate better fisheries management and regulatory frameworks, and to build an equity analysis for how climate change will disproportionately affect certain countries. “It is imperative that developments are well planned and properly regulated to avoid unwanted environmental impacts, degradation of local cultures and livelihoods, and the inequitable distribution of benefits,” said the climate report.