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Welcome to my Professional Practice!
Welcome to my Professional Practice!
The host organization
The host organization
Sciaena is a Portuguese Environmental Non-Governmental Organization with legal personality that works on marine conservation and towards a sustainable use of marine resources on a national and European level. It was created in 2006 by students with a marine sciences background in the University of Algarve, and since then they have promoted sustainability and protection of the marine environment and its resources, as well as the minimization of pollution through different projects and a team formed by experts in different areas of knowledge. Sciaena is one of the founders of PONG-Pesca (Platform of Portuguese NGOs on Fisheries) and they have developed a strong voice in the Portuguese fishing community. They have worked on the Common Fisheries Policy reform and are contributing to its implementation with other international ENGOs.
The project
The project
Aquaculture has been praised as the next big thing in Blue Economy ever since this term was first used in the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development. At a global scale, 50% of the fish consumed annually comes from aquaculture, with production numbers growing steadily over the last decades to meet consumer demand (see figure below). Although some research and companies have shown this sector’s potential for sustainability in its various forms, the same can be said for its potential to cause harm in the environment and in other maritime activities.
The main goal of this professional practice was to frame a discussion and generate a debate on sustainable production of seafood in aquaculture, bringing different stakeholders of this industry together and addressing different topics in a series of webinars. My main responsibilities were to suggest topics of interest, develop the structure of the webinars, do some research in the current global and national picture, make a list of contacts of interest, and then send invitations to participate in the project. The webinars were co-hosted via Zoom by me and Nicolas Blanc, member of Sciaena, followed by a Q&A session.
The webinars
The webinars
The Role of the Ecosystem Approach for Sustainable Aquaculture Intensification
The Role of the Ecosystem Approach for Sustainable Aquaculture Intensification
“An Ecosystem Approach for Aquaculture is a strategyfor the integration of the activity within the wider ecosystem such that it promotes sustainable development, equity, and resilience of interlinked social-ecological systems”
Doris Soto is a Senior Scientist at INCAR - Interdisciplinary Center for Aquaculture Research in Chile, after spending more than 10 years as an Aquaculture Senior Officer at FAO. She gave some insight about the ecosystem approach and how it can be used for sustainable aquaculture intensification. Aquaculture produces around 50% of the fish we consume, but considering the expected continued rise in demand for fish protein, can aquaculture production increase in a sustainable way? The main concluding points were:
Need of Aquaculture Management Areas (AMAs)
Need of understanding the carrying capacity of whole water bodies where aquaculture is taking place, not only local impacts of individual farms
Define appropiate ecosystem boundaries to develop management plans
Define ecosystem level indicators for aquaculture performance/impacts
Work with integrated environmental and social monitoring systems
Current Issues in Sustainable Aquaculture - Escaped Fish and Carrying Capacity Models
Current Issues in Sustainable Aquaculture - Escaped Fish and Carrying Capacity Models
Kilian Toledo-Guedes is a marine ecologist from the Canary Islands currently working in the University of Alicante, focused on carrying capacity models in aquaculture.
He explained carrying capacity models and how they are the link between site selection and environmental sustainability indicators with a study case in the Mediterranean that added a social dimension to the model. They studied three facilities; one with high production, another with medium production and finally one with low production. In the high and low production facilities, the production level exceeded the carrying capacity, but in the medium one it approached the same values. This was a good starting point to develop a tool easily adaptable to different regions.
Pablo Arechavala-Lopez is a multidisciplinary ichthyologist that works as a researcher in FishEthoGroup Association and in the Fish Ethology and Welfare Group at CCMAR - Centro de Ciências do Mar.
He focused on implications and management of escaped fish in aquaculture. In many countries there is no legal framework to deal with this, so the magnitude and periodicity of escape incidents makes it a severe issue. The main risks are degradation of the environment, disruption of the host community, spread of diseases and socioeconomic side effects.
Aquaculture and Marine Conservation: Looking for a Common Challenge?
Aquaculture and Marine Conservation: Looking for a Common Challenge?
Raphaëla le Gouvello currently works at the IUCN within the Ecosystem-based Aquaculture Group of Experts (E-bAG) exploring and documenting the sustainability of this sector on a global scale. She is the founder of the French NGO RespectOcean and a well known windsurfer with worldwide records.
In her presentation, she introduced the IUCN/E-bAG and explained the need to reconcile Nature Conservation and Sustainable Development including the aquaculture component. She commented on different preliminary case studies. There should be further exploring of the needs and opportunities for aquaculture and conservation through existing tools like the EAA, Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) with Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM), Environment Impact Assessment (EIA), etc. As well, they have been pioneers in Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for aquaculture; IUCN defines NbS as “Actions to protect, sustainably manage and restore natural or modified ecosystems that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.”
Finally, she presented a case study in Zanzibar (see below), and concluded that the solution does not come from "banning" aquaculture, only badly practiced aquaculture, but from relying on the existing tools to approach sustainability in order to achieve the common good, a good healthy environment.
About me
About me
I was born in Gran Canaria, Spain, so I grew up surrounded by the sea, and I always felt fascinated by it. I did a bachelor in Biology, motivated by my passion for learning about life, but soon enough I knew I wanted to do something in the Marine field. I found the IMBRSea program and felt captivated by the wide spectrum of opportunities I saw in it, especially about travelling and experiencing different countries and lifestyles. I was accepted in the Management track and I did the first semester in Brest, France, and the second one in Faro, Portugal. I have now a bigger knowledge about fisheries and aquaculture, and I feel that is a subject of great interest for me mainly for the social component. I strongly believe that communication is key, and that scientific knowledge must reach the general public and make communities engage in the understanding and protection of the environment they depend on, so this internship with an ENGO has been very useful for me, and I enjoyed it as much as I could in a remote situation.
Contact
Contact
I am very aware of the limitations experienced due to the COVID-19 crisis, so I will leave here my email in case you want further information on Sciaena or the webinars, as well as if you have any interest on the presentations or articles from the researchers contacted. Do not hesitate to ask for it or contact me to bring any comments that you may have!
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