Aquaculture Magazine Volume 48 Number 4 August - September 2022

Aquaculture industry perspectives: Patrick Waty, CEO of INVE Aquaculture. An exclusive interview for Aquaculture Magazine.

Replacement of fishmeal in feather meal-based diet and its effects on tilapia growth performance and on water quality parameters.

The probiotics Vibrio diabolicus (Ili), Vibrio hepatarius (P62), and Bacillus cereus sensu stricto (P64) colonize internal and external surfaces of Penaeus vannamei shrimp larvae and protect it against Vibrio parahaemolyticus.

Assessing the variability and discriminatory power of elemental fingerprints in whiteleg shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei from major shrimp production countries.

California shellfish farmers: Perceptions of changing ocean conditions and strategies for adaptive capacity.

Inside Aquaticode.

Evaluation of a Recirculating Aquaculture System research facility designed to address current knowledge needs in atlantic salmon production.

Freshwater aquaculture development in EU and Latin-America: Insight on production trends and resource endowments.

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Production performance of Pacific bluefin tuna Thunnus orientalis larvae and juveniles fed commercial diets and effects of switching diets.

Fish Tales: How narrative modality, emotion, and transportation influence support for sustainable aquaculture.

Conference of Agricultural Cooperators of the Americas 2022 - USSEC.

68

COLUMNS

FAO IN AQUACULTURE

The new Mesoamerican Network of Small-scale Aquaculture Farmers.

By Alejandro Flores

70

CARPE DIEM

The 35th COFI Session from Rome.

By Antonio Garza de Yta, Ph.D.

72 THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

The lure of high-density shrimp culture and why it can be risky.

By Stephen G. Newman Ph.D. * President and CEO, AquaInTech Inc.

76 THE FISHMONGER

Some issues to ponder.

Consumption of aquaculture products = Healthy nutrition + environmental benefits

Marco Linné Unzueta Associate Editor

According to FAO (2016), population growth will reach 9.5 billion people by 2050, resulting in an esti mated additional 40 million tons of shellfish needed by 2030, nearly dou ble our current production for human consumption. Against this backdrop, FAO is asking questions, “How can this deficit be overcome sustainably?” To answer this question, we can assume that aquaculture-derived foods will de velop such that “...in the next decade, the total production of capture fisheries and aquaculture will exceed that of beef, pork and poultry” (FAO, 2016). This production is of high quality from a nutritional perspective and will in turn translate into healthier diets, assuming measures that meet Good Production Practice (GPP) and Good Manufactur ing Practice (GMP) standards. These measures will make it possible to reduce the carbon footprint through sustain ability measures.

Considering the above, one of the most important points is to promote the recognition and nutritional use of seafood, because despite the constant market changes and price fluctuations caused by inflation processes, CO VID, war, etc., you can be sure that aquaculture products are accessible to the average consumer. However, I repeat that we should aggressively promote the benefits of consuming these proteins to increase per capita consumption. According to FAO, global consumption of aquatic foods reached 20.5 kg per capita by 2019. This is partly due to the strong growth of aquaculture, which currently pro vides 44% of the products consumed by the population, and it is projected that consumption will reach 21.4 kg per capita in 2030 (FAO, 2020).

We should not forget that part of this “good” nutrition is that aquacul ture products provide proteins, fatty acids, vitamins and minerals. These are elements of a healthy diet that help protect against malnutrition in all its forms and non-communicable

diseases such as diabetes, heart dis ease, stroke, and cancer.

In the context of strategies to re duce greenhouse gas emissions, the future diet promoted, in most cases, a “green” diet based on plant sources and ignored the potential of a “blue” diet based on aquatic products. Thus, it allows for adequate growth and consolidates aquaculture production units by making them more competi tive and integrating them into value networks that produce value-added products for national and interna tional markets.

We should develop strategies that promote growth, programming, and standardization of production with out neglecting to increase profitabil ity. Similarly, we should promote the sustainable use of resources, reflected in measures to reduce emissions and the introduction of fuel-saving tech nologies. Also, work to produce more fish and shellfish that do not need a food-based diet, and find sources for producing more environmentally friendly fish feed.

Norway’s Probotic confirms effectiveness of its underwater drones for inspecting and cleaning fishing nets

are available for interested customers. Probotic disclosed that the beta ver sion of the detection algorithm also finds holes.

The current cleaning system is reactive

According to the company’s vision, the current method in fish farming for cleaning fish pen nets is reactive, meaning that they are cleaned when the buildup of algae and debris is so severe that it is necessary to do so. In Probotic’s view, this reactive ap proach negatively affects the environ ment, the health of the fish and the operators, as well as being costly and resource-demanding.

Probotic, the Norwegian-based aquaculture technology company, has unveiled the first findings from a pi lot test with its innovative Probot un derwater drone. The device’s achieve ments are already revolutionizing the aquaculture sector by automating the inspection and cleaning of fish nets, one of the fish farming industry’s most significant pain points. Automa tion, the company reported, results in cleaner feed production, improved animal welfare, lower operating costs and reduced climate emissions.

“The idea for this technology came to me after working several years inspecting and cleaning fish pen nets the traditional way,” explained Mikkel Pedersen, CEO and founder of Probotic. “I knew there could be a more efficient way to get the job done, so I got to work on my vision of building a robot that would auto mate these processes, saving aquacul ture companies hours of labor and operational costs,” he added.

Pilot testing of the drone began earlier this summer at the company’s Ballangen Sjofarm facility and, after a

month, the mechanical aspects have been verified. The next test is aimed at optimizing the drone’s navigation and detection algorithms. The Pro botic prototype is from Probotic’s seventh prototype series and corre sponds to the last prototype of this series before the launch of the pro duction model.

Main findings

One of the most significant findings of the Probot P.7 prototype is that its jet-propulsion system works in real conditions and enables seaweed to flush through the water jet.

In addition, the drone can oper ate at 90 cm/s water stream when in cleaning mode, and at 180 cm/s wa ter stream when in inspection mode. Moreover, it has been noted that the submersible docking station keeps the drone secured in place when passing through a storm with a 1 m/s water current.

As reported by the Norwegian company, after a month of testing there are no dealbreakers. Live vid eos and sensor data from the drone

The traditional system is manu ally operated and uses high-pressure water to pump and remove algae and debris. One of the problems is that the biofilm is discharged directly into the net and causes an unsatisfactory environment for the fish.

The importance of having a preventive method

But the Probot underwater drone uses a preventive method that is a more natural and gentle way to clean the nets and hinders biofilm cre ation on the fish nets entirely. This is made possible by constant clean ing throughout the day, as the drones only pause during battery charging, or during an additional inspection by the operator.

In this regard, Pedersen explained that “the Probot system will be leased for service, which ensures our sus tainability goals and gives us control over the product life cycle. It also means that we are responsible for ensuring that the product performs as expected during its lifetime, allow ing customers to focus on their other high-value operations.”

World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production held in the Netherlands focus on Aquaculture

and physiological trait measurements for breeding program management.

Roslin Institute Aquaculture

In this edition, the event received the presence of the Roslin Institute Aquaculture group, of the Univer sity of Edinburgh, was represented by Agustin Barria, Clémence Fraslin, Robert Mukiibi and Saif Agha, who presented some of their most novel results at the conference.

Aquaculture was one of this year’s focal areas of the World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production 2022 (WCGALP) took place a few weeks ago in Rotterdam, Netherlands. With an increase in the number of papers presented in the conference in comparison to the pre vious events, the 12th edition of the WCGALP being accorded two full afternoon sessions on the second day of the congress.

The participants were specialists in the field of animal genetics and re lated expertise. During the congress they shared knowledge and inter acted on innovations in the area of genetics applied to livestock produc tion. Also known as the ‘Olympics of Genetics’, WCGALP occurs every four years and gathers researchers from the entire world for five days of presentations. The 2022 edition was hybrid, with online and onsite partici pants, providing an opportunity for a large number of scientists around the world to share their work.

The scope of WCGALP 2022 was aimed at the sustainable production of high-quality animal proteins for

a growing world population through modern animal breeding. Animal breeding relies on research and de velopment as well as long-term com mitment to increase the efficiency of the food chain, reduce its ecological footprint, minimize the use of an tibiotics, and generally contribute to food security and safety, all while maintaining better health and welfare of farmed animals and meeting the changing consumer demands.

Aquaculture talks

The Aquaculture talks focused mainly on disease resistance traits including resistance to Flavobacterium columna ris in rainbow trout, Piscirickettsia salmo nis, sea lice in Atlantic salmon, SRS in Coho salmon, and VNN in seabass.

The second session focused on breed ing and novel phenotyping techniques with an invited talk by Wageningen University’s Wout Abbink on the pos sibilities of using electronic sensors to monitor different fish behavioral changes in breeding environments.

He demonstrated that the electronic sensors they developed could be used to collect very accurate health, welfare

Fraslin presented her results from the AQUAImpact project on ‘Poten tial of imputation for cost-efficient genomic selection for resistance to Flavobacterium columnare in rainbow trout’. She demonstrated the potential of utilizing lower density SNP pan els (as low as 300 SNP markers) and genotype imputation to enable cost effective implementation of genomic selection in the aquaculture industry.

Whole Genome Sequence information

Part of the conference was aimed on the use of Whole Genome Sequence information, either to explore the ge netic architecture of traits (GWAS sessions), where the use of WGS data improved QTL detection and fine mapping, or in two sessions dedi cated to the challenge of using such information, with a focus on cattle.

Theo Meuwissen presented an in teresting talk ‘On the advantage of identifying causal genetic variants for genomic prediction’, concluding that in some cases identification of causal variants improved the prediction accu racy whereas for other traits surround ing SNPs could pick-up the effect of the variant. Knowing causal variant is helpful to understand the biology un derlying the phenotype and opens up possibilities for gene editing.

The consumer research made in 12 countries by Aquaculture Stewardship Council reveals that health is the reason number one to buy seafood

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) has completed its most comprehensive consumer research to date, interviewing more than 12,000 consumers in 12 different countries about their perception and consump tion of seafood. Is like that that they found out ‘number 1’ reason for buy ing seafood is health. In all 12 markets, health is the primary driver for con sumers buying seafood –with Germa ny and France leading this trend.

The fieldwork for it was conducted between December 2021 and Janu ary 2022, via online consumer panels. Approximately 1,000 consumers were surveyed in each country: the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, China, and Japan. It is the most substantial

consumer research ASC has conduct ed since its founding in 2010. Other important information re vealed by the study is that more than 80% of consumers agree that includ ing fish in their daily shopping is im portant for health reasons. That trend is highest in Spain, with almost full consensus (96%), and lowest in the Netherlands– still with a strong con sensus of 80%. However, consumers also love seafood for its taste, which was the second mention, and see it as a pivotal part of a well-balanced diet.

An industry that has the potential to be sustainable and responsible

The research shows that most con sumers –between 75% and 89% de pending on market– believe the sea food industry has the potential to be

sustainable and responsible, showing the potential of seafood as an envi ronmentally-friendly source of animal protein.

However, this potential is not yet fully realized: more than half do not perceive it to be sustainable right now. Consumers in the countries that have stronger sustainability sensibility –the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France– tend to think the seafood industry is less sustainable and less responsible than consumers in other countries.

Certification schemes central to seafood sustainability improvements

While consumers are not satisfied with the current level of sustainabili ty of the seafood industry, they large ly agree that they can play a part in its improvement. Between three and

four out of five respondents state that buying responsible seafood has a positive effect on oceans.

The importance of certification schemes to drive forward the sus tainability of the seafood industry becomes clear in the research. Con sumers’ most trusted sources of in formation about seafood sustainabil ity and responsibility are independent certification schemes that put their la bels on seafood packaging –more than environmental organizations, seafood brands, retail brands or other sources.

ASC, the label more recognized

For farmed seafood, ASC is the most recognized certification scheme, with the highest awareness in the Neth erlands where two-thirds of respon dents recognize the ASC label, fol lowed by Belgium (60%), Germany (58%), France (48%) and the United

States (46%). Research also shows that trust in the ASC label is generally high –with trust figures ranging from 68% in France to 80% and above in Italy, the UK, the US and Australia. Additionally, the majority associate the ASC logo with sustainability and responsibility.

Sustainability, the third most common requirement

The research also reveals that while sustainability is a top consideration in seafood purchases, consumers may not be buying responsibly as often as they can. Freshness and cost are the two highest considerations for consumers when asked, unprompted, what their requirements are when buying seafood. Sustainability is the third most common requirement.

When asked if they prefer wild or farmed seafood, consumers have

a preference for wild, especially in Spain and France. However, an al most equivalent number of consum ers have no preference between wild or farmed –seen especially in Japan, as well as Germany, the Netherlands and Australia. The survey also reveals that more information is needed to alleviate concerns and misconcep tions of consumers about farmed seafood.

Latest biennial, multi-market, quantitative study

About the survey, ASC tracks global and regional progressions of seafood shopper awareness, attitudes, trust and activation relating to responsibly farmed seafood and the ASC certi fication and labelling program. The research completed most recently is the latest of a biennial, multi-market, quantitative study.

Led by Oban, Scottland based Tri tonia Scientific, with support from the Lyell Centre at Heriot-Watt Uni versity, seafood producer Mowi, and the Sustainable Aquaculture Inno vation Centre (SAIC), the company is testing the effectiveness of using remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to create digital twins of the seabed. This new imaging technology could help the aquaculture sector to gain a more accurate picture of the com plex seabeds they are operating.

The experts in underwater imag ing technology are trialing the use of a first-of-its-kind system that could see 3D digital models used by Scot tish seafood producers to map out and monitor complex marine envi ronments and habitats.

The new system will use under water ROVs linked to above water GPS technology and acoustic tran sponders to capture digital images

of the seabed to assess the seabed at current of future finfish farms as well as identifying the presence of priority marine features –nationally protected habitats and essential underwater ecosystems for Scotland’s coastal seas. Using the images, Tritonia will create an accurate 3D model that can show various physical characteristics and be used alongside advanced com parison software to monitor changes on the seabed.

Martin Sayer, Managing Director of Tritonia Scientific, said: “Using imaging technology could help the aquaculture sector to gain a much more detailed, accurate picture of the complex seabeds they are operating beside or above. Our hope is that the system could ultimately support regu lation and environmental monitoring in ways that would provide the levels of evidence that would be necessary for future sustainable operations”.

Digital record of the hard substrate

Over the next 12 months, the team at Tritonia will develop a digital re cord of the hard substrate found at Mowi sites in the Western Isles, using a technique known as georeferenced photogrammetry.

Compared to soft seabed, where samples of sediment can be taken regularly and easily, monitoring hard substrates can be challenging because of the low visibility of the water even when using divers or drop-down cameras to assess the terrain. The hard nature of the seabed makes it near impossible to grab samples.

“At the moment, divers face a range of challenges in terms of vis ibility and climate, particularly if algal blooms are present, but the digital twin allows us to essentially remove the surrounding water at the click of a button, using images captured by an

Scottish Tritonia Scientific and SAIC develop new underwater ROVs that could help the aquaculture sector to gain a more accurate picture of the seabeds

ROV. Just one survey can generate a 3D model that provides a permanent record of the seabed terrain at a fixed point in time, which could be used for comparisons for years to come,” said Sayer.

From a single ROV dive, a wealth of data and images can be captured to provide producers with accurate information to aid decision-making, such as the volume and area of spe cific geographical features, as well as detecting protected habitats such as marl beds, which are formed of red coralline algae and known to be dif ficult to locate.

First breakthrough into the aquaculture sector

Tritonia currently employs 3D pho togrammetry to survey and monitor marine renewable installations, piers and harbors, and to inform decom missioning programs in the oil and

gas sector, but this project represents the company’s first breakthrough into the aquaculture sector.

Heather Jones, CEO of SAIC, said: “Technology is becoming in creasingly important for the aquacul ture sector and collaborative research projects and trials can be an incredi bly valuable demonstration of the re al-world applications of new data-led techniques. In this case, we could see ROVs and imaging technology play ing a vital role in reducing the sector’s environmental impact and increasing its economic impact by supporting future regulatory requirements.”

“Coastal habitats are some of the most physically and biologically di verse ecosystems on our planet. The socioeconomic, environmental and cultural benefits we gain from them are worth billions around the world every year. Monitoring the effect of coastal industry and human activ

ity on these habitats is crucial for understanding how best to protect them, but it remains logistically dif ficult. This project will allow us to overcome this using a scalable and flexible approach that brings the sea bed into a virtual laboratory,” added Heidi Burdett, Associate Professor at the Lyell Centre.

The project, funded by the UK Seafood Innovation Fund, will pro vide the base data for further trials, and potentially help create a regula tory tool for long term monitoring of the potential impacts of aquaculture on hard substrates.

Aquaculture industry perspectives:

Patrick Waty, CEO of INVE Aquaculture. An exclusive interview for Aquaculture Magazine

By: Aquaculture Magazine Editorial Team.

Population growth and the resulting increase in food demand have drawn atten tion to aquaculture and its tremendous potential to make an im portant contribution as a sustainable source of protein, requiring coordi nation of efforts among the various stakeholders to respond to the chal lenges of the present and future. With this in mind, Aquaculture Magazine conducted an exclusive interview with Patrick Waty, CEO of INVE Aquacul ture, who shared with us and our read ers his vision about the industry and the role of innovation in the sustain ability of aquaculture production.

In this context, Patrick offers us his perspective: “Over the next 5 years we expect Shrimp production across the Americas to grow at a CAGR of 7%

from 1,590 m MT in 2022 to 2,200 m MT in 2027. Within South America we expect Ecuador to lead growth, increasing from 1.2 m MT in 2022 to 1.6 m MT in 2027. We’re expecting strong growth in the Central Ameri cas region with production doubling over the next 5 years, in particular, Venezuela performs strongly driven by exports to the EU and good ac cess to land in the Maracaibo basin, at the moment the industry is growing at 30% a year! Mexico will grow slower at around 2.5% and, although showing good growth Brazil will remain a small contributor at around 0.09 m MT in 2022 and 0.105 m MT in 2027”. He is optimistic when he points out that “Ecuador is the best setup for growth with a committed government and several strong producers with good access to capital. Farmers have fewer challenges or constraints on land than some other countries and are (most importantly) profitable and making money! We’d like to see exports to the

US or EU increase proportionally to reduce reliance on China”.

Referring to other latitudes outside the Americas, INVE Aquaculture’s CEO explained his projections “we expect slow growth of the shrimp in dustry of 2-3% per year in India with the production of P. Monodon grow ing faster than L. vannamei, although L. vannamei will continue to account for the vast majority of production (94% in 2027). We expect Vietnam to show good growth in Asia with Thailand continuing to struggle to be competitive. Indonesia showed good resilience over the COVID pandemic increasing sales to the US but domes tic consumption was low and disease/ biological challenges remain high”.

Regarding Europe and the Middle East, he stated “we expect the most significant growth to be in Turkey and expect around 19% growth in production over the next 5 years. We are excited about emerging markets in Oman and the Middle East although

Patrick Waty, CEO of INVE Aquaculture, spoke with Aquaculture Magazine about his vision for the future of global aquaculture in the coming years and INVE’s undeniable contribution to the development and growth of the industry.

What do you think will be the growth of aquaculture in the next 5 - 10 years, in terms of species and regions?

INVE belongs in the market, next to the customer with our hands in the water. Our mission is to support the production of aquaculture systems and the business growth of our cus tomers. We provide sustainable & in novative solutions, adding value at key points in culture lifecycles. We believe that feed quality in the broodstock and larval stages has long-lasting benefits, microbial management is a must from hatchery to harvest and living condi tions of cultured animals need to be carefully controlled”.

tween INVE and our colleagues from Benchmark Genetics – loo king to combine our two techno logies into tailored Genetics-Nu trition packages and protocols for customers. There is huge potential to impact producers’ predictabili ty, consistency and ultimately pro fitability in the combination of the portfolios and new data sys tems we are working on will help us document and evidence this”.

these are slow to materialize and will make a small proportion of total pro duction”.

How does INVE Aquaculture position itself to help aquaculture development and growth?

Patrick Waty begins to answer this question by highlighting the tremen dous growth opportunities of aqua culture. “Water covers 60% of the world’s surface but aquaculture pro vide just 2% of the world’s food. I don’t need to tell you, or the readers of Aquaculture Magazine, that our industry has a crucial role to play in feeding the world’s growing popula tion now and in the future. For us, the only way to shape this future is to do it in close collaboration and partnership with the market. Creating awareness of feed conversion, end-product qual ity, and system management, we aim to set higher and higher standards for success in rearing aquaculture species. We’ve been doing this for 35 years and remain as ambitious and our appetite for innovation, cooperation and pro fessionalism is just as strong now as it was when INVE was formed”.

He explained that INVE has po sitioned itself to be on the ground in key aquaculture hotspots “we have people present in 27 countries with R&D centers and Technical Sup port teams across Europe, Asia, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa.

As an example of important devel opments in the sector, he emphasizes the contribution that the use of Arte mia has made and is still relevant “To day, Artemia remains an important and critical component in protocols. For aquaculture to keep growing using the limited natural supply of Artemia, the industry will have to take on the chal lenge of using Artemia as efficiently as possible. This requires adequate knowledge and application strategies. Developing new products and tech nologies related to Artemia and sharing the innovations & related knowledge with customers will help the industry to grow”.

Looking to the future, he expresses the importance of “Maintaining spe cific know-how related to the use of live feeds on the hatchery floor itself, is important for the future. The abil ity to rely on technical experts from INVE Aquaculture, able to transfer this knowledge to the new generation in the hatchery, will help to secure the future of the sector as well”.

• • •

“Focusing just on INVE – our approach to our portfolio sets us aside from our competitors. We have in-house expertise in the three main disciplines essential for aquaculture production - op timization of animal nutrition, management of animal health and rigorous control of the culture en vironment. Combined with more than 35 years of operations and hands-on technical experience, we’re one of few companies that can offer holistic culture practices covering these three essential as pects”.

“Once a product is through our innovations department, we have full control of our products through the intake of high-quality raw materials, through manufactu ring at our facilities in Asia and the US, through distribution, and ulti mately on-site follow up with our Technical Services team”.

In this context, Patrick Waty men tioned the key factors that make up the company’s competitive advantages in the market, namely:

“Over the next 5 years we expect Shrimp production across the Americas to grow at a CAGR of 7% from 1,590 m MT in 2022 to 2,200 m MT in 2027. Within South America we expect Ecuador to lead growth, increasing from 1.2 m MT in 2022 to 1.6 m MT in 2027”. • •

“One of our greatest differentia tors is our connection to the two other divisions of the Benchmark Group. We are at the beginning of a new stage of cooperation be

“Our commitment to our custo mers sets us apart from our com petitors. From our Innovations and teams, through Commercial and Operations, through to Te chnical Support, everything we do is designed to solve customer challenges and fulfill customer needs. We have a large in-house R&D department with testing and research centers on the ground in the major aquaculture markets”.

“Our customers have access to ex perts and technical support (team of skilled technical advisors), who understands the need of the cus tomer and can help and solve the problems”.

How does INVE Aquaculture distinguish itself from other companies participating in the same aquaculture markets?

“INVE Aquaculture has long been the reference point for ma rine fish hatchery products. Our approach is focused on providing high-quality products that have a positive long-term effect on fish robustness and performance. All our current and future products are studied and challenged in our marine fish hatchery in Italy. Furthermore, we have a team of experienced experts that strive to fine-tune protocols to local condi tions to achieve efficient and qua lity fry production”.

Aquaculture?

Trying to sum up everything he plans to do this year, Patrick tells us about his goals in three main aspects:

“Personally, for the rest of 2022, I look forward to traveling more and meeting more of my colleagues, our customers and partners. I said it ear lier, but INVE really does belong in the market and over the last two years we have missed our face-toface contact and I’m excited as this returns. Just these last two weeks I have been visiting our team and cus tomers in Thailand and it’s fantastic to be back on the ground, not always on a call!”.

“For the company, I am excited about extending our cooperation with our Breeding and Genetics colleagues in Benchmark and combing our two technologies into tailored GeneticsNutrition packages and protocols for customers. There is huge potential to impact consistency, performance, dis ease resistance and robustness, and ultimately profitability in the combi nation of the portfolios and new data systems we are working on will help us document and evidence this”.

“At a product level, within Marine Fish we have just introduced a ma jor innovation line ‘Natura pRo’ and ‘ExL’. A feedline that reduces rotifer requirement from 50% without im pacting fry quality and survival, while improving them. I’m excited to see

the performance of this product in the market over the next 6 months”.

In terms of sustainability, how is INVE aquaculture contributing to making aquaculture production more sustainable?

INVE Aquaculture understands that sustainability is not just about using “green ingredients” and recyclable packaging “but also getting the abso lute most, we can from animals within our systems, with the minimum num ber of inputs. Our greatest potential to contribute to the sustainability of aquaculture is the right application of the right products and protocols at the right time - to ensure every animal achieves its maximum poten tial”. They also only work with part ners who meet the same standards of quality control, regulatory compli

ance, work ethic, and environmental responsibility.

Patrick concludes the interview by discussing the measures INVE Aqua culture is implementing as a sign of its commitment to aquaculture sustain ability based on its holistic approach to disease prevention and environ mental management:

• •

“Our Procurement Department is increasing our sourcing of sus tainably produced products with Marine Trust, ProTerra, Friends of the Sea, etc. certification. Transport and supply optimiza tion is an ongoing project”.

“We’re in the process of applying for and pursuing GLOBAL GAP Compound Feed Manufacturing certification at all our production facilities. Even though INVE’s aquaculture portfolio is produced

Patrick with the INVE Ecuadorian team (Xavier Valdéz y Ramiro Solano), Wim Tackaert, José Antonio Camposano (Executive Director - CNA), Pamela Nath (Director - SSP) and Patrick Sorgeloos during a visit in Ecuador.

Patrick visiting our HQ in Thailand.

What do you look forward to in 2022 and what excites you about the future of INVE

“We have in-house expertise in the three main disciplines essential for aquaculture productionoptimization of animal nutrition, management of animal health and rigorous control of the culture environment”.

to the highest standards available on the market, we want to have it officially certified. Not only be cause of the certificate itself but also because it meant that our processes had been reviewed by an independent source”.

“One of our largest and most important products (Artemia) is a natural resource and must be ma naged sustainably as such. Our technologies and innovations have optimized Artemia use and harvesting, whilst making the pro cess safer and with less impact on natural stocks. These optimized and cost-effective innovations (Artemia, SEP-Art technology, D-FENSE) have simplified Arte mia production, making Artemia a convenient and sustainable live food for larval fish and shrimp.

• • •

At the world’s most important Artemia harvest site – the Great Salt Lake in Utah, USA - we’re involved in the ‘Management of Artemia resources of the Great Salt Lake (Utah, USA)’ initiative together with the other members of the COOP, the International Artemia Aquaculture Consortium, and members of state and natio nal government”.

“We are continuously investing in our production facilities in order to produce more efficiently and reduce waste and environmen tal impact. This year solar panels will be installed at our factory in Thailand meaning 30% of the to tal electricity used by the plant will come from renewable sources”.

“Our farm portfolio gathers pre ventive solutions, eco-friendly

biocide & natural antimicrobials, water & soil bioremediation solu tions, immunostimulant & robust ness enhancer to support animal health and rearing conditioners. Our holistic approach to disease prevention and environmental management is the key to sustain able aquaculture production - we believe that prevention prevails and is much more cost-efficient than any emergency treatment or blind mitigation”.

Finally, he reported that INVE joined the Sustainable Shrimp Part nership as an Associate Partner in Ecuador in June 2022. The goal is to “change perceptions and treatment of shrimp from commodity to high-qual ity product. The group is concerned with improving shrimp farming prac tices along the entire production chain to improve quality and environmen tal & societal impact”. By produc ing shrimp according to the criteria that SSP has set for itself to achieve the highest environmental and social standards, the absence of antibiotics and water neutrality, “we can ensure a sustainable future for the shrimp sec tor,” Patrick concludes this interesting interview with our director Salvador Meza.

https://www.inveaquaculture.com/rotifers/

Patrick Waty, CEO of INVE Aquaculture, and Salvador Meza Editor and Publisher Aquaculture Magazine during the interview.

* Interviewer: Salvador Meza Editor and Publisher Aquaculture Magazine

Interviewed: Patrick Waty, CEO of INVE Aquaculture

Replacement of fishmeal in feather meal-based diet and its effects on tilapia growth performance and on water quality parameters

Feed can account for 50 to 80% of operating costs in aquaculture production, and generally protein components account for more than twothirds of fish feed costs. Therefore, given the declining production of fishmeal worldwide, sustainable alternatives to replace the feed source need to be found and produced. Here we present the results of a successful replacement of fishmeal in diets based on feather meal for tilapia.

By: Aquaculture Magazine Editorial Team*

Feather meal (FeM) is one of the rendered protein in gredients that is commonly used in fish feeds at levels of 3 – 7%; however, fish feed manufac turers are reluctant to use higher lev els of feather meal in their feeds due to significant variability in the quality and nutritive value of different batch es of feather meal (Bureau, 2010).

Some academic and commercialscale trials have reported excellent performance in fish with feeds con

taining greater than 12% feather meal. However, some trials reported relatively poor performance of feed with high levels of feather meal (Bu reau, 2010) and the source of dis crepancies among the results of dif ferent trials was unclear.

It is of utmost importance to ac curately characterize the nutritional value of FeM in order to optimize its use in fish feed. Developing method ological approaches and rapid screen ing tests to effectively differentiate

feather meals of different nutritive values should be a priority for the rendering and aquaculture feed in dustry. Notably, feeds can account for 50 to 80% of the operational costs of aquaculture production and Malaysia is very dependent on imported soy bean and fishmeal as protein sources in its aquaculture industry. Generally, protein ingredients account for more than two-thirds of the fish diet cost. Sustainable alternatives to replace the feed source need to be identified and

Generally, protein ingredients account for more than two-thirds of the fish diet cost. Sustainable alternatives to replace the feed source need to be identified and produced due to the declining global production of fishmeal.

produced due to the declining global production of fishmeal.

It is practical and economical to focus on further developing down stream processing and increasing the production of FeM and poultry offal meal as protein sources for the aqua culture industry since there is a highly developed status of poultry produc tion in the country and many poultry processing plants. Here we present the results of completely replacing fishmeal with hydrolyzed FeM-based diets on the growth performance and feed conversion ratio (FCR) of tilapia, and also the effects on water quality parameters.

Materials and method

Experimental

treatments

A total of 315 red hybrid tilapia (Oreochromis sp) male fingerlings with a mean initial body weight of 37 g were purchased from a hatchery in Selan gor. Prior to the feeding trial, the fish were adapted to the experimental sys tem for 2 weeks.

Then, they were randomly divid ed into 3 treatments and three rep lications with 35 fish per replication. The fish were fed one of the three treatment (Table 1) diets: (a) control diet, (b) 10% inclusion of hydrolyzed feather meal (FeM) and (c) 15% in clusion of hydrolyzed FeM, replacing 92% and 100% of fishmeal in the di ets (Table 1)

Diet preparation

The hydrolyzed FeM had nutrient content of 13.8 MJ/kg digestible en ergy and 606 g/kg digestible crude protein. The experimental diets were formulated to be isoenergetic, 13 MJ/ kg digestible energy (DE) and isoni trogenous, 29% digestible protein (DP). The nutrient compositions of the diets are tabulated in Table 2. By means of using the National Research Council (NRC) nutrient requirements of fish and shrimp (NRC 2011) as a guide, the least cost formulation diets were formulated to meet the mini mum specifications for tilapia.

After the extrusion process, the pellets were coated with the vitamin concentrate (Peterlabs Sdn. Bhd.) mixed in fish oil using a coating ma chine (TSASB).

Growth study

The fish were fed the experimen tal diets with a total of 3% (1st 8 weeks) and 2% (2nd 8 weeks) of the fish biomass twice a day at 9.00 am and 4.00 pm. Every two weeks, the amount of feed was adjusted accord ing to the last live body weight deter mined by weighing. The experiment was performed in polyethylene tanks, with total volume of 1 m3 each and equipped with a semi-closed water re circulating aquaculture system (RAS). The RAS system was equipped with a nitrification unit and a sedimenta tion unit. Stocking density in fish tanks was 28 L/fish. All experimental tanks were supplied with air through an aeration system. A 30% volume of water in the fish tanks was replaced with clean water weekly. The feeding trial was conducted for 16 weeks.

Results and discussion

Growth performance of fish

A steady increase (Figure 1 and 2) was observed with regards to the growth and feed intake among tilapia over the 16 – week period. The 10% FeM diet gave the best final fish weight, weight gain, SGR and FCR (p < 0.05) compared to the control and the 15% FeM diets (Table 3 and Table 4).

Also, tilapia that were fed with 15% FeM diet performed better than the control for final fish weight, weight gain, SGR and FCR (p < 0.05). The 15% FeM diet (Table 1) did not include any fishmeal; besides protein from FeM, other major protein sourc es were from plant sources such as soybean and corn gluten meals. The significantly better (p < 0.05) growth performance and FCR for the 15% FeM diet compared to the control diet suggested that higher FeM inclu sion levels are possible if the deficient amino acids in FeM are substituted for synthetic sources.

Bishop et al. (1996) reported that the growth of Oreochromis niloticus fry was not compromised by replacing 9.9% of the total diet with feather meal. This result is comparable to the findings from Chor et al. (2013). However, Chor et al. (2013) evalu ated several levels (9.86, 19.71, 29.57, 39.42 and 49.28%) of FeM to replace Danish fish meal as the sole protein source.

It was revealed that catfish that were fed the control diet had sig nificantly better weight gain, spe cific growth rate and feed intake than those fed with diets containing FeM. Apart from that, they also re ported that FeM supplementation at 9.86% was comparable to the con trol for survival rate and FCR. How ever, high fish mortality and retarded growth were observed in the 19.71 – 49.28% FeM-supplemented di ets. Catfish mortality increased with the increase of FeM inclusion with mortality ranging from 11.1 – 62.2% with FeM supplementation. As com pared to the present study, there was no mortality in all the treatments (10 and 15% FeM) and this may be due to the difference in quality of FeM be tween the studies. The growth, feed efficiency, nitrogen or energy gains of rainbow trout were not affected by the inclusion of up to 15% FeM (Bureau, 2000). Higher FeM usage was reported by Sulomo et al. (2014) as they observed that FeM inclusion up to 19.8% in Nile tilapia diets did

not compromise growth and protein utilization. A very high fishmeal in clusion of 22% was observed and in comparison to the present study, only 0 and 1% of fishmeal inclusion for the FeM-based diets were observed.

Water quality

Referring to the results presented in Table 5, the mean range values for DO2 (mg/L) for all treatments were within the optimum and not signifi cantly different between treatments (p > 0.05). There were significant differences (p < 0.05) in pH and temperature (Table 5) between treat ments. Nevertheless, the pH and temperature ranges were within the optimum. It is noteworthy that the means and range of values for DO2,

pH and temperature were within the optimal range for tilapia production. Weekly DO2 data (Figure 3) for the treatments during weeks 9, 11 and 12 were below 5.0 mg/L and closer to 3.0 mg/L, although these relatively lower values were still within the ac ceptable range for tilapia production.

Unionized ammonia (NH3) is the toxic form of ammonia and pre dominates when pH is high. NH4 + is relatively non-toxic (Hargreaves and Tucker 2004) and predominates when pH is low. The mean values for unionized NH3 (Table 5) were within the optimum, ranging from 0.028 –0.031 mg/L (mean 0.029 mg/L) for treatment A, 0.019 – 0.021 mg/L (mean 0.020 mg/L) for treatment B and 0.020 – 0.026 mg/L (mean 0.023

mg/L) for treatment C. On compari son, unionized NH3 was significantly higher (p < 0.05) in treatment A than treatments B and C. Weekly NH3 val ues for weeks 1, 13 and 14 exceeded the optimum range for growth, but recovered and were within the opti mum range in the subsequent weeks. The increase of NH3 during these weeks may have been due to overall fish growth and more protein waste excretion. The declines in weekly feed intake (Figure 2) were due to the NH3 increase during these weeks.

When ammonia began to accumu late, fish responded through reduced feeding activity and microorganisms use oxygen for the degradation of un digested feed resulting in lower DO2 levels. The values for the toxic NH3 for all the treatments were below the lower lethal range 0.6 mg/L and below the 2.0 mg/L level when tilapia began to die. Toxic NH3 made up 1.29, 1.07 and 1.04% (Table 5) of the total NH3 plus NH4+ for treatments A, B and C, respectively, which were well below the proportion of under 10% report ed by Hargreaves and Tucker (2004). Values for ionized NH4+ (Table 5) ranged from 2.10 – 2.30 mg/L (mean 2.22 mg/L) for A, 1.68 – 1.94 mg/L (mean 1.85 mg/L) for B and 1.90 –2.46 mg/L (mean 2.19 mg/L) for C. There was a significant difference (p < 0.05) in NH4+ values between

treatment A and B. NH4+ is relatively non-toxic and the weekly NH4 + data reflected the weekly NH3 data.

No detrimental effects on the wa ter quality in the experimental tanks and on the performance of the fish as no mortality recorded with the inclu sion of 10 or 15% hydrolyzed feather meal.

As regards the tilapia aquaculture in Malaysia, average feeding costs of the surveyed farms made up almost 63% of the production cost, while high production cost was due to the use of commercial tilapia feeds (Ng et al., 2013). Thus, cheaper feed in gredients like FeM can help alleviate the cost of aquaculture production. Gatlin et al. (2007) and Tacon and Metian (2008) highlighted on the con siderable progress made in finding substitutes to replace the diminishing supply of an increasingly expensive fish meal. The availability of soybean products (soybean meal and soy pro tein concentrate) made them viable alternatives to fishmeal, but whether they can effectively replace fishmeal in fish diets is still debatable and more research is required with regards to the issue. Hernandez et al., (2010) reported a complete replacement of fishmeal using animal proteins from porcine and poultry by-product meals in practical diets for fingerling Nile ti lapia.

Conclusion

The results showed that FeM can completely replace fishmeal (a declin ing and unsustainable source) in tila pia diets up to 15% of the total feed, resulting in good growth and feed conversion ratio without adverse ef fects on water quality parameters. It is practical and economical to produce FeM as a protein source for the aqua culture industry due to the highly de veloped status of poultry production and many poultry processing plants in Malaysia (Wong and Mardhati, 2010). Apart from that, developing rapid screening tests to effectively differen tiate feather meals of different nutri tive value (Bureau 2010) should be a high priority for both the rendering industry and aquaculture feed indus try due to the wide variation in results reported for FeM used in aquaculture feed.

This is a summarized version developed by the editorial team of Aquaculture Magazine based on the review article titled “REPLACEMENT OF FISHMEAL IN FEATHER MEALBASED DIET AND ITS EFFECTS ON TILAPIA GROWTH PERFORMANCE AND ON WATER QUALITY PARAMETER” developed by: S.T. YONG1, M. MARDHATI1, I.J. FARA HIYAH1, S. NORAINI1 and H.K. WONG - Animal Science Research Centre, Selangor, Malaysia. The original article, including tables and figures, was published on JANUARY, 2018, through JOURNAL OF TROPICAL AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SCIENCE. The full version can be accessed online through this link: https://www.researchgate.net/publica tion/335078554_Replacement_of_fishmeal_in_feather_ meal-based_diet_and_its_effects_on_tilapia_growth_per formance_and_on_water_quality_paramete

ASSESSING THE RISK OF CLIMATE CHANGE TO AQUACULTURE:

a national-scale case study for the Sultanate of Oman

By: Aquaculture Magazine Editorial Team*

Understanding the risks that climate change poses on different culture systems in different locations is important to enable the design of targeted adaptation and resilience building actions. We present an aquaculture climate risk assessment framework, applied to the aquaculture sector of the Sultanate of Oman, that identifies the sensitivity and exposure of different components of the sector to climate change risk, that is also relevant and broadly applicable to many other regions around the world.

Aquaculture is a rapidly ex panding component of global food security, and in 2018 overtook wild harvest fisheries in its contribution to global human food supply (FAO, 2020). Although growing in impor tance for world food security and economic development, aquaculture is susceptible to climate change. So it is important to assess the risks and challenges that climate change poses to aquaculture in order to implement targeted adaptation and resilience building actions to safeguard future productivity.

In the Sultanate of Oman, the aquaculture sector is at an early stage of development with commercial production having grown modestly from 13 t in 1998 to 450 t in 2018

(FAO, 2017). However, the sector has been identified for major expansion within Oman’s national economic di versification programme to support economic development and food se curity in decades to come (MAFW, 2019). The government plans for de velopment of the aquaculture sector focus on coastal shrimp ponds, finfish sea cages especially for seabream, re circulating aquaculture systems (RAS) for groupers and salmon, and ponds and raceways for sea cucumber and the endemic abalone Haliotis mariae (MAFW, 2019; and see Figure 1).

However, Oman is situated in one of the hottest regions on earth, and climate change is progressively de veloping in the northwestern Indian Ocean and Arabian Gulf at the same time as the development of Oman’s aquaculture sector. Here we present a climate risk assessment (CRA) of the aquaculture sector of Oman. It builds on the CRA introduced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2014 as a means for quan tifying climate change risks to linked ecological-economic systems.

Methods

In this CRA, the calculation of cli mate risk for aquaculture is based on four components:

1. Thermal sensitivity, which com pares the optimum growing tem peratures of different species cul tured, in relation to average sea temperatures characterizing each governorate;

2. Flooding and storm surge expo sure, the vulnerability to coastal flooding and storm surge of dif ferent culture types in different governorates;

3. Low-oxygen hazard, associated with the likelihood of cultured species being exposed to low-ox ygen water conditions, taking into account the culture methods; and

4. Disease vulnerability, potential exposure to significant diseases (based on the number of diseases of concern reported for each spe

cies and the culture method used). For each component, the risk in dex is calculated based on the sensi tivity of each species cultured to the risk factor and the expected exposure to the risk in each governorate. A measure of overall climate risk – by species and governorate – is then cal culated as the unweighted mean of the four components (Figure 2).

The Climate Risk Assessment (CRA), the first for Oman, demonstrates the application of a flexible framework that identifies climate risks to the aquaculture sector.

Table 1 summarizes the species included, along with their expected potential for development within the aquaculture sector of Oman, the main culture systems, and the governorates where these are either produced or are foreseen to be pro duced. For each species, the sensi tivity to thermal stress from climate change was assessed. Disease risk is incorporated into this CRA as it may increase with climate change due to two factors.

Results

Thermal sensitivity

The 19 aquaculture species that may be farmed in ambient condi tions differ widely in maximum pre ferred temperatures (TP90), ranging from 21.44ºC in gilthead seabream to 29.77ºC in yellowfin hind (Table 2). Between Oman’s coastal gov ernorates, there is also variation in

SST, which averaged over the year is warmer in northern than southern coastal sea areas. In combination, species differences in TP90 and spa tial differences in SST are reflected in thermal safety margins for candidate species that vary considerably, from positive (ambient SST < species’ TP90, i.e. low thermal stress; shaded blue in Table 2 to highly negative (ambient SST > species’ TP90, i.e. high thermal stress; shaded red).

Exposure to flooding and storm surge

Shrimp culture is assessed as being at high risk from sea level rise and flooding, particularly in Al Batinah, Muscat and Ash Sharqiyah – the lat ter governorate important for current shrimp production. This risk factor is low for species farmed in floating sea cages (seabreams, amberjacks, Asian seabass), and for the northern gov ernorate of Musandam; the steep

coastal topography and many deep sheltered bays (khawrs) appear to render Oman’s.

Hazard from low-oxygen levels

The hazard from low-oxygen levels in sea water was assessed as great est (score 12 on scale 1–12) for fish species cultured in marine cages (seabreams, amberjacks, seabass, co bia), especially in southern governor ates (Al Wusta, Dhofar) with coastal waters more likely to be impacted from hypoxic conditions. However, most production for these species is envisaged further north where this risk factor is lower. For groupers reared in RAS, low-oxygen hazard is assessed as low owing to the con trolled conditions, whereas for At lantic salmon reared in RAS this haz ard is assessed as intermediate owing to the active-swimming behavior and associated high oxygen demands.

Vulnerability to disease

The culture type ranking highest for disease vulnerability, was shrimp. This reflects the large number (9) of OIE listed diseases for Penaeus van namei and P. monodon. In pond cul

ture, where seawater is brought in, it is difficult to fully exclude disease from ponds; barriers or filters can be incorporated but completely exclud ing disease vectors remains challeng ing. For the three amberjack species

(2 OIE listed diseases), import of live broodstock is expected; some import of juveniles is envisaged for grouper culture (3 OIE listed diseases for greasy grouper), which would in crease risk of pathogen introduction.

Disease vulnerability is ranked low for seabreams with few OIE listed diseases, where production takes place in many different sea cages and is hence not highly concentrated.

Overall climate risk to aquaculture

Overall climate risk to aquaculture in Oman – combining thermal sensitiv ity, flooding exposure, low-oxygen hazard and disease vulnerability – is highest for shrimp culture (Table 3). This is due to (1) high disease vul nerability, and (2) high exposure of coastal shrimp ponds to flooding or storm surge. Flooding exposure is high in Ash Sharqiyah where shrimp culture is being started; it is lower for Al Wusta but within this governorate, sites suitable to shrimp culture would typically be at low elevation and flood risk will depend on the exact location of each facility. For Penaeus indicus, overall risk is scored lower than for P. vannamei and P. monodon due to a smaller number of OIE listed diseas es, however as highlighted above, dis eases in both other species have been investigated far more extensively, and P. indicus is impacted by the important white spot disease. Hence overall cli mate risk to P. indicus might be under estimated here.

Overall climate risk is also high in amberjacks cultured in sea cages, due to (1) exposure to pathogens (with amberjacks being at risk from at least two OIE listed viral diseases) and (2) potential hazard from low-oxygen levels (amberjacks being active swim mers with high oxygen demands). Low-oxygen risk is higher in waters off Al Wusta, during the monsoon season impacted by the Arabian Sea oxygen minimum zone. However, flooding exposure to cage-farming is low. Of the three amberjack spe cies, Japanese amberjack is at highest climate risk, owing to its cooler-wa ter preferences and therefore higher thermal sensitivity if reared in cage conditions in Omani waters.

Low climate risk was recorded for the two grouper species, yellowfin hind and greasy grouper. They have been proposed for culture in RAS, which are inherently less impacted by ambient temperature or other envi ronmental conditions. Even so, both yellowfin hind and greasy grouper are well within their natural temperature ranges in Omani waters, and hence would experience little thermal stress if re-located outside. Moreover, the fully isolated, RAS conditions make exposure to pathogens less likely.

Omani abalone and sea cucum ber aquaculture are characterized as low risk, partly due to these species being within natural temperature ranges, especially within the gover norates of Dhofar and Al Wusta, respectively, where these species would be cultivated.

For aquaculture of Atlantic salm on in Oman, a fully controlled and isolated RAS system is proposed, which would render salmon pro duction relatively independent from ambient temperature or other en vironmental conditions; this does, however, necessitate full temperature control given salmon’s cold-water re quirements. This also makes the risk from pathogen introduction low, pro vided original stock is safely sourced free of OIE listed diseases.

Conclusions

This aquaculture CRA, the first for Oman, demonstrates the application of a flexible framework that identifies climate risks to the aquaculture sec tor. Importantly the CRA identified the overall climate risk level for dif ferent species, culture types and gov ernorates, and for each the predomi nant components of climate risk.

A significant finding was that the highest climate risk is for shrimp farming yet this is seen as a corner stone for future aquaculture develop ment in Oman. Key risks identified are (1) disease vulnerability and (2) exposure to flooding.

Climate risk is also high for the species currently cultivated in great est quantities in Oman – gilthead seabream (Table 3). It is here driven by (1) thermal sensitivity and (2) lowoxygen hazard, and less by storm surge exposure or disease risk. Alter native, technical option is the use of submersible cages (sunken to deeper, cooler waters) provided these are well aerated. Seasonal stocking of gil theads (part RAS and part net pen) may be another alternative to avoid the highest-risk periods.

For recirculating aquatic systems (RAS), climate risk is considered low (groupers) or fairly low (Atlantic salmon) (Table 3). This is due to the highly controlled culture conditions, which decouple these systems from

Although growing in importance for world food security and economic development, aquaculture is susceptible to climate change.

natural environmental fluctuations (Soto et al., 2018). Thus, thermal and low-oxygen related risks are low. Nevertheless, backup power systems are required as temperatures would soon be out of control if cooling failed in case of power shortages. Moreover, if RAS are situated close to sea they are still prone to inunda

tion, and there is the need to manage risks from disease vulnerability.

Screening-level risk assessment, such as carried out here provides guidance to scientists, resource man agers and stakeholders on how cli mate change is expected to impact the physiology, life cycles and envi ronment of aquaculture species and,

ultimately, the way they are farmed. The study also highlights knowledge gaps in aquaculture research across a broad range of farming systems; outcomes from this assessment will focus attention towards the research required to underpin more detailed quantitative assessments of higher risk culture types, species and sites and thus more optimal allocation of human and operational resources. Aquaculture production provides sig nificant social, economic and nutri tional benefits globally. The methods presented provide a broadly applica ble, cost-effective and rapid approach not only to assess risk, but also to communicate risk to stakeholders and facilitate the necessary dialogue on pathways to adaptation – elements that make these methods relevant to many other regions around the world to build climate resilience in the glob al food chain.

This is a summarized version developed by the editorial team of Aquaculture Magazine based on the review article titled “ASSESSING THE RISK OF CLIMATE CHANGE TO AQUACULTURE: A NATIONAL-SCALE CASE STUDY FOR THE SULTANATE OF OMAN” developed by: GEORG H. ENGELHARD - International Marine Climate Change Centre University of East Anglia. ELLA L. HOWES - International Marine Climate Change Centre; JOHN K. PINNEGARInternational Marine Climate Change Centre, University of East Anglia; WILL J.F. LE QUESNE -International Marine Climate Change Centre. The original article, including tables and figures, was published on FEBRERO, 2022, through CLIMATE RISK MANAGEMENT. The full version can be accessed online through this link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j. crm.2022.100416

The probiotics Vibrio diabolicus

(Ili), Vibrio hepatarius (P62), and Bacillus cereus sensu stricto (P64) colonize internal and external surfaces of Penaeus vannamei

shrimp larvae and protect it against Vibrio parahaemolyticus

By: Aquaculture Magazine Editorial Team*

Bacterial diseases produced or induced by species with in the Vibrio genus have caused significant econom ic losses in shrimp farming world wide due to mass mortality rates up to 100%. A recent example is the acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) that mainly affects postlar vae and juvenile penaeid shrimp.

Several research’s reveals that AHPND is caused by virulent strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus carrying the virulent plasmid pVA1 containing

The vibrios carrying the PirA and PirB toxin genes cause acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) in cultivated shrimp, significantly affecting the yield. The use of probiotic strains is a promising strategy to prevent vibriosis in shrimp cultures. Here we presented results indicating that the preventive use of probiotic strains with colonization capacity increase larvae protection. This may be a good strategy for the control of AHPND in shrimp larvae hatcheries.

PirA and PirB toxin genes. Recently, it has been reported that the bacterial etiology of AHPND also involves other vibrios, including, Vibrio har veryi, Vibrio owensii, Vibrio campbellii, and Vibrio punensis. Lai et al. (2015) determined that when the pathogenic AHPND-causing V. parahaemolyti cus colonizes the shrimp stomach, it starts to produce Pir A and Pir B toxins. These toxins reach the hepa topancreas, provoking severe injuries. In Central America, losses provoked by AHPND has been reported in

shrimp larvae hatcheries. In 2017, epidemiological studies performed in South America indicated that strong mortalities registered in hatcheries were associated with V. parahaemolyti cus, PirA and PirB toxin carrier.

Vibriosis has traditionally been treated with antibiotics for prophy lactic and therapeutic purposes with poor results. Furthermore, antibiot ics induce bacterial resistance, even in V. parahaemolyticus, and the risk of the accumulation of residues in the envi ronment. In Ecuador, several studies

In larviculture environments, pathogenic shrimp vibrios exhibit the ability to proliferate planktonically in the water, as well as rapidly colonize shrimp.

with locally isolated marine bacteria have proven to cause beneficial ef fects on P. vannamei cultures. In addi tion, the survival and yield of ponds stocked with shrimp larvae treated with Ili was higher than the ponds stocked with non-treated larvae. The Vibrio hepatarius (P62) and the pro biotic strain P64, recently identified as Bacillus cereus sensu stricto probiotic strains increased the immune re sponse of P. vannamei juveniles, result ing in a positive effect on survival in treated ponds (Gullian et al., 2004; Aguayo et al., 2009).

Despite the obvious benefits of the probiotic consortium (Ili, P62, and P64), the structures necessary to colonize shrimp surfaces, and the competition for colonization with AHPND-causing V. parahaemolyti cus, has not been studied until now. To fill this gap, the presence of cell surface appendages of bacteria in the probiotic strains was characterized by scanning electron microscopy in transmission mode. Afterwards, the colonization ability of the labeled probiotics in the postlarvae (PLs) of P. vannamei was evaluated using fluo rescence and confocal microscopy.

Material and methods

The probiotics V. diabolicus (Ili strain), V. hepatarius (P62 strain), B. cereus s.s. (P64 strain) and the patho gen AHPND-causing V. parahae molyticus (BA94C2 strain) in shrimp, were provided by the Department of Microbiology of the National Center for Aquaculture and Marine Research (CENAIM, ESPOL).

Initially, the three probiotic strains were characterized by scanning elec tron microscopy. Next, the coloniza tion capacity of the three probiotic strains in P. vannamei shrimp larvae was determined by direct exposure of the shrimp larvae to probiotics previously stained with fluorochrome dyes, orange acridine, Evans blue, and DAPI (4′, 6-diamidino-2-phe nylindole). The larvae were observed using epifluorescence and confo cal microscopy. Larvae exposed to AHPND-causing V. parahaemolyticus stained with acridine orange were quickly and completely colonized. Finally, the probiotic consortium in P. vannamei larvae was evaluated in a larviculture (Nauplii 5 to postlarvae 8), where the three probiotics were applied daily. The trial included a control group without the applica tion of the probiotic. After 16 days of culture, the larvae treated with the microbial consortium and the control group were challenged with a patho genic, the AHPND-causing V. para haemolyticus strain.

Results

Morphological characterization of probiotic strains

Scanning electron microscopy mi crophotographs (Figure 1) focused on the observance of fimbriae and flagella in the cells. Cellularly, Ili is oval, presenting rounded ends with size between 1.3 and 2.2 μm in length and 0.6–0.9 nm in width, with a dis tinctive presence of numerous lateral flagella (Figure 1A). P62 has ovalshaped cells with a size between 1.4 and 2.7 μm in length and 0.8 to 1.7 μm in width with a very well-defined plasma membrane structure, where the fimbriae are anchored (Figure 1B). P64 has a characteristic bacillar shape with a size between 1.5 and 2.9 μm long and 0.8–1.2 μm wide, in ad dition to a well-defined plasma mem brane with the presence of flagella and fimbriae (Figure 1C). All three probiotics were able to form biofilms after 48 h of incubation. However,

the strongest biofilm was formed by the probiotic bacteria Ili (p < 0.05) followed by P62 and P64. These re sults were confirmed when the bio films were stained with acridine or ange (A0).

Swarm motility assays of probiotic bacteria

The probiotic Ili and P62 exhibited lower swarming motility at 25ºC. Ili reached its maximum growth at tem peratures of 27ºC (p < 0.05). The mi gration of Ili was significantly higher than of the other probiotic bacteria (p < 0.05) at all temperatures. The swarming motility of P64 was not affected negatively by low tempera ture. In addition, at 25ºC the swarm

ing motility of P64 was significantly higher (p < 0.05) as compared to pro biotic P62 (Table 1).

Probiotic bacteria colonization assay in shrimp larvae

The confocal microscopy allowed to verify the adhesion capacity of the three probiotic bacteria to the shrimp cuticle and gut, and Figure 2A shows the Ili probiotic strain attached to the oral zone. In Figure 2B, the P62 pro

biotic strain appear adhered to the peritrophic membrane of intestine. In the Figure 2C, the probiotic P64 stained with DAPI is detected in the cells of uropod’s.

The protecting features of the three probiotics were evaluated by their interaction with AHPND-caus ing V. parahaemolyticus. Larvae in Z3 stage exposed to V. parahaemolyticus, were completely colonized, observing larvae strongly stained with AO (Fig

Bacterial diseases produced or induced by species within the Vibrio genus have caused significant economic losses in shrimp farming worldwide due to mass mortality rates up to 100%.

ure 3A). If the larvae were previously colonized with each individual probi otic, the signal of V. parahaemolyticus was less, and it was restricted to the external cuticle and a section of the lateral midgut cecum (Figure 3B, C, D). When the larvae were colonized by the probiotic consortium, only a weak signal of the pathogenic Vibrio was detected in the external cuticle (Figure 3E and F), and no signal of AHPND-causing V. parahaemolyticus was detected in the digestive system. The larvae of the negative control ex hibited a weak signal of fluorescence, when they were treated with the su pernatants of the bacteria stained with AO. Only natural fluorescence was de tected in larvae treated with the super natant (bacteria-free) of the bacteria stained with DAPI and Evans blue.

In vivo trials, challenge test of shrimp larvae cultivated with the probiotic consortium exposure At the end of the larviculture, the sur vival rate of the PL8 treated with pro biotics consortium was 83.8%, with no significant differences compared to the non-treated larvae (84.4%). However, after the challenge test with AHPND-causing V. parahaemolyticus, the survival rate of the larvae treated with the probiotic consortium was 75.33 ± 12.62%, significantly higher (p < 0.05) than the survival rate of the control larvae (32.27 ± 9.57%).

Discussion

In larviculture environments, patho genic shrimp vibrios exhibit the abil

ity to proliferate planktonically in the water, as well as rapidly colonize shrimp. Therefore, probiotic bacteria must be able to compete for these spaces, exhibiting colonization abili ties. The microscopic observations, as well as the in vitro and in vivo re sults achieved in the study, indicate that the probiotics Ili, P62 and P64 possess the cell surface appendages, necessary for the colonization of the host surfaces. Larvae exposed to probiotic consortium exhibited a high survival after a challenge with AHPND-causing V. parahaemolyticus Thus, the application of the probi otic consortium in the P. vannamei in

hatcheries could provide the larvae with a protective effect against patho genic Vibrio spp.

Electron microscopy allowed to determine that the robust swarm motility observed in the probiotic Ili could be explained with the large number of lateral flagella that this bacterium has. It is established that the bacterial behavior of swarming motility on solid surfaces is mediated by lateral flagella. The probiotic P64 is also characterized by having lateral flagella and its swarming motility is greater than P62, in which these cel lular appendages were not detected. Lateral flagella not only facilitate

swarming motility, but they also con tribute to surface adhesion, thereby facilitating the formation of biofilms (Merino et al., 2006). This could also explain why more developed biofilms were observed in Ili strain.

Another non-flagellar bacterial cell structure that facilitates biofilm formation is the fimbriae. These were very abundant in P62, a bacterium that exhibited more robust biofilms than P64, in which fewer fimbriae were observed.

Together the three probiotics colonized both the external and in ternal surfaces of the larvae. The occupation of these sites could be

one of the main action mechanisms of these probiotics. In this regard, it should be noted that AHPND-caus ing V. parahaemolyticus infects shrimp by first colonizing the surfaces of the stomach, where it generates toxins that can penetrate the hepa topancreas, therefore destroying it. If these sites are already occupied by probiotics, the pathogenicity of V. parahaemolyticus could be reduced. Complete exclusion of AHPNDcausing V. parahaemolyticus in the gut was obtained when the probiotic consortium was employed. In other words, there was an efficient coloni zation of the gut and external cuticle

by Ili and P62, and colonization of gut and peritrophic membrane of the intestine by P64.

The three probiotics generated a strong fluorescent signal in the lateral midgut caecum (which will differenti ate into hepatopancreas). It was de tected a strong fluorescent signal for P64 in the base of the uropod setae and in the underlying cells, indicating that this could be a possible route of entry at least for this probiotic (Fig ure 2C). In fact, it was observed a strong signal for P64 in the gut epi thelium cells (Figure 4). Therefore, it is assuming that these bacteria can penetrate the host’s hemocele.

Shrimp larvae cultivated with the probiotic consortium exhibited an improved survival (75%) when they were exposed to AHPND-causing V. parahaemolyticus. Probiotics attached to external cuticles and internal surfaces with competitive exclusion capacity against pathogenic V. parahaemolyticus may explain these levels of survival.

Conclusion

The probiotics Ili, P62, and P64 pos sess fimbriae and flagella, cell surface appendages, necessary for the coloni zation of surfaces through biofilms and swarming motility. These probi otics colonize shrimp larvae exclud ing the pathogenic AHPND-causing V. parahaemolyticus. These findings are critical to develop new probiotics for the aquaculture industry.

This is a summarized version developed by the editorial team of Aquaculture Magazine based on the review article titled “THE PROBIOTICS VIBRIO DIABOLICUS (ILI), VIBRIO HEPATARIUS (P62), AND BACILLUS CEREUS SENSU STRICTO (P64) COLONIZE INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL SURFACES OF PENAEUS VANNAMEI SHRIMP LARVAE AND PROTECT IT AGAINST VIBRIO PARAHAE MOLYTICUS)” developed by MERY RAMIREZ - Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, ESPOL and Universidad Estatal Península de Santa Elena UPSE; CRISTOBAL DOMÍNGUEZ-BORBOR - Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, ESPOL; , LIZETH SALAZAR; ALEXIS DEBUT; KARLA VIZUETE- Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE; STANISLAUS SONNENHOLZNER - Escuela Superior Poli técnica del Litoral, ESPOL; FRANK ALEXIS - Universidad Yachay Tech, School of Biological Sciences and Engineer ing; JENNY RODRÍGUEZ - Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, ESPOL. The original article, including tables and figures, was published on DECEMBER, 2021, through AQUACULTURE. The full version can be accessed online through this link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquacul ture.2021.737826

Assessing the variability and discriminatory power of elemental fingerprints in whiteleg shrimp Litopenaeus vannamei from major shrimp production countries

The origin of seafood is important to consumers and importers alike. Element profiling has been brought into play as a potential tool to improve seafood traceability. Results are presented here that demonstrate the potential of a traceability database for shrimp aquaculture products from predominant producing countries.

By: Aquaculture Magazine Editorial Team*

Most of the produc tion of the whiteleg shrimp, Litopenaeus vannamei , is centered in a few countries in Latin America and Southeast Asia, including Ec uador, Thailand, Vietnam, India,

Indonesia, and China. While China is the world’s leading producer of whiteleg shrimp, most of its pro duction is for domestic consump tion, while the rest of the countries listed above largely produce shrimp for international trade. The largest

destination markets are Japan, USA, EU, Korea, and somewhat surpris ingly because of its high domestic production, China (UN, 2020).

Despite the importance of sea food to the human food supply chain, seafood is plagued by label

ing fraud that is well documented in the United States and the European Union. Mislabeling is used to ma nipulate prices, improve marketing, replace farmed species with wild species, and meet quota require ments of processors. In aquaculture shrimp products, transshipping has been an issue in the past, resulting in incorrectly labeled country of or igin among retail products. Claimsmaking such as sustainability related claims in certifications also rely on traceability and accurately account ing for the origins of products. Sev eral analytical methods have been explored as traceability tools includ ing fatty acid analysis, stable isotope analysis, DNA profiling. In addi tion, new technologies such as block chain and radio frequency identifi cation have been implemented in seafood supply chains.

Element profiling has been identi fied as another tool to increase trace ability in seafood products, and has shown promise as a tool for discrimi nating geographic origins in shrimp.

Ecuador has been an important pro ducer of shrimp, since the 1970’s. To date, only one study evaluating elemental profiling as a traceability tool has included Ecuador (Smith & Watts, 2009), so the potential to dif ferentiate shrimp from Ecuador and individual countries in Southeast Asia using this method is relatively unexplored. Thus, the objective of the study presented here was to un derstand the potential of elemental profiling to differentiate between the major shrimp producing countries in Southeast Asia and Ecuador.

Methods

Whiteleg shrimp were collected from five countries: Ecuador, India, Indo nesia, Vietnam, and Thailand. Uti lizing the knowledge of the authors of the study who are experts in the aquaculture industries in their respec tive countries, collection sites were chosen in each country to be repre sentative of the major production ar eas of shrimp (Figure 1). All farms sampled utilized similar production

practices (semi-intensive or intensive operations), and all shrimp were fed pelleted shrimp feeds. Samples were collected from farms in the same manner (Li et al., 2017). Shrimp were prepared for storage until element analysis in the following manner. Shrimp were brought to a laboratory in the country of sampling and de headed and peeled. The peeled tails were then dried in commercially food dehydrators at 50 ºC until the tissue reached constant mass, at least 12 h. Upon drying, the samples were stored frozen until shipment for analysis.

In preparation for digestion, a sub sample of 3-5 shrimp from each sam pling event were freeze dried over night to remove any residual mois ture. The digestion of the shrimp tissue was done following an adapta tion of EPA, method 200.8 (US EPA 1994) for solid materials (Environ mental Express, 2018).

A NexION 350 d ICP-MS (Perki nElmer Inc., Waltham MA USA) was used to conduct the elemental analy sis for this study. Both standard and

kinetic energy discrimination mode are used during analysis. Several steps were taken to ensure consistency be tween runs and within runs.

Elements were removed from the statistical analysis if more than 20% of the samples were below detec tion limits. The mean and standard deviation of element concentrations of samples are reported by coun try of origin. A one-way MANOVA type analysis was conducted utilizing a test statistic described in Friedrich and Pauly (2018), which is statistically robust to heteroscedasticity, does not rely on multivariate normality, and can be used with high dimensional data.

Results

The MANOVA style test that was conducted found a statistical differ ence among the elemental profiles of the five countries in this study

(MATS = 947.047, p < 0.001). A summary of the elemental concen trations in shrimp tail muscle tissue and the univariate statistical tests that followed the MANOVA with the MATS statistic are presented (Table 1). Overall, significant dif ferences were detected in 28 out of the 33 elements reported. In 15 of the 28 elements where statistical dif ferences were noted, and in 17 el

ements overall, shrimp from Ecua dor had the highest concentrations on average (e.g., Al, Fe, Li, Sr). Out of the 28 elements with significant differences, Ecuador had unique group membership in seven of the elements (Al, As, Cs, Er, Fe, Gd, Sr). Vietnam and Thailand tended to be long to the same post-hoc group ings, being in the same group in 25 out of the 28 elements where sig

Despite the importance of seafood to the human food supply chain, seafood is plagued by labeling fraud that is well documented in the United States and the European Union. Mislabeling is used to manipulate prices, improve marketing, replace farmed species with wild species, and meet quota requirements of processors.

nificant differences were detected.

Overall, the random forest clas sification model obtained across validated accuracy of 91% (Table 2). The out-of-bag (OOB) accuracy for the same model was 89%. The most accurate results were for Ec uador (97%), while the least accu rate results were for Thailand (80%), which had samples misclassified as

Ecuador, Indonesia, and Vietnam. While Thailand and Vietnam had lower accuracies than those for Ec uador, they were most frequently misidentified as one another, with 5/48 samples from Thailand being identified as being from Vietnam and 5/53 samples being identified from Vietnam being Identified as Thailand. Indian shrimp were mis

identified as Ecuadorian (2/61), but also there were samples misclassi fied as Thailand and Vietnam.

The most important element in the classification model was Cs, followed by As and Se (Figure 2). The least im portant elements were Cr and Pb.

The canonical discriminant analysis (CDA) reduced the dataset to four canonical variables. In the

With an overall accuracy of 91% using a random forest classification model, the results show that farm-raised shrimp can serve as a database for potential traceability applications, whether for private retailers or government agencies.

first two dimensions, which account for ~78% of the total variation, Ecuador and India separate from the three countries in Southeast Asia (see Figure 3a). Indian shrimp separate from shrimp from the other countries along the second canonical variable, while Ecuador separates along the first canonical variable. Elements with strong fac tor loadings in the first canonical variable include Al, As, Sr, while variables highly correlated with ca nonical variable 2 are Al, Co, and V (Table 3). While Thailand, Viet nam, and Indonesia overlap in the first two dimensions of the CDA, Indonesia separates from Thailand and Vietnam in the first and third dimension, which is highly associ ated with the elements Ca, Cs, and V (Figure 3b).

Discussion

It was conducted a discriminant analysis with a random forest model with farmed whiteleg shrimp from major exporting countries with ele ment concentrations from shrimp muscle tissue. The basis for elemen tal profiling is that patterns of het erogeneity exists in samples from different predefined groupings (e.g.,

species, production method, geo graphic origins). In this dataset, 28 out of 33 elements reported showed statistical difference among group ings. In general, samples from Ec uador were more mineralized than samples from other countries. This may be because of the freshwater runoff that comes from the Andean mountains in Ecuador being higher in minerals than the lowland regions of Southeast Asia.

Overall, the accuracy of the dis crimination procedure with 328 samples was 91%. This compares favorably to other studies that have been done with regards to identify ing geographic location in cultured shrimp. Li et al. (2017) covered a subset of the geographical areas in this study, and had an overall accu racy of 97%, but with less samples and a more limited scope. Gopi, Mazumder, Sammut, Saintilan, et al. (2019) was able to identify black tiger shrimp Penaeus monodon to re gions in Australia and Southeast Asia with 98% accuracy, however the results of that study may be confounded with the mixture of wild capture and cultured shrimp in their sample, as culture vs. wild capture has been successfully delin

eated by elemental profiling in other cases (Anderson et al., 2010; Varra et al., 2019).

Seafood traceability is a grow ing concern for producers, retailers, and consumers. Consumers are be coming more aware of the impact of their purchasing power and are therefore willing to buy products that are perceived as “sustainable,” even if they have a higher price tag (Roheim et al., 2011).

In many cases, retailers use cer tification schemes as a proxy for sustainability and claims making, as it removes them from the process of validating the claims about the product but allows them to proj ect environmental consciousness. In aquaculture, both the Aquacul ture Stewardship Council and the Global Aquaculture Alliance Best Aquaculture Practice (BAP) shrimp standards have chain of custody and traceability requirements. Find ings add evidence towards the pos sibility of using elemental profiling as a traceability tool. Here, shrimp samples from five countries that are the world’s leaders in shrimp ex ports were successfully discriminat ed based on country of origin. This is also a considerably larger sample

than other similar studies and is not confounded by any species or cul tured vs. wild artifacts in the data. Moreover, study shows that shrimp sampled from Ecuador likely have unique element profiles compared to shrimp in Southeast Asia, which has been the focus of previous efforts in elemental profiling in shrimp.

Conclusion

Overall, this work shows that with more robust sampling (sampling in more locations and more samples within each farm), a database could be generated to discriminate geo

graphic origins of shrimp from the world’s leading shrimp exporting countries. The authors sought to classify shrimp to country of origin to five of the largest shrimp export ers in the world. The potential of elemental profiling as a traceability tool in practical applications is still relatively unexplored. With an over all accuracy of 91% using a random forest classification model, the re sults show that farm-raised shrimp can serve as a database for potential traceability applications, whether for private retailers or government agencies.

This is a summarized version developed by the editorial team of Aquaculture Magazine based on the review article titled “ASSESSING THE VARIABILITY AND DIS CRIMINATORY POWER OF ELEMENTAL FINGERPRINTS IN WHITELEG SHRIMP LITOPENAEUS VANNAMEI FROM MAJOR SHRIMP PRODUCTION COUNTRIES)” developed by: ROBERT P. DAVIS AND CLAUDE E. BOYD - Auburn University; RAVIBABU GODUMALA and AVANIGADDA B. CH MOHAN- Seafood Solutions; ARTURO GONZALEZ - World Wildlife Fund, Guayaquil, Ecuador; NGUYEN PHUONG DUY - World Wildlife Fund for Nature, Hanoi, Viet Nam; PANDE GDE SASMITA J - Udayana University; NUR AHYANI - World Wildlife Fund, Jakarta, Indonesia; OLGA SHATOVA and JOSHUA WAKEFIELD - Oritain Global Limited; BLAKE HARRIS and AARON A. MCNEVIN - World Wildlife Fund; D. ALLEN DAVIS - Auburn University. The original article was published on OCTOBER, 2021, through FOOD CONTROL. The full version, including tables and figures, can be accessed online through this link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2021.108589.

California shellfish farmers: Perceptions of changing ocean conditions and strategies for adaptive capacity

The shellfish aquaculture industry along the U.S. West Coast is particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification (OA), given the negative effects of low pH on shellfish survival and growth. We present the results of interviews conducted with West Coast shellfish farm owners and managers in order to investigate perceptions of OA and environmental change and identify specific strategies for adaptation.

By: Aquaculture Magazine Editorial Team*

Coastal communities and resource users experience a wide range of environ mental and livelihood stressors, including intense resource competition, urbanization, and envi ronmental degradation that affect the resources upon which they rely. Cli mate change exacerbates these stress ors and creates new pressures on coastal environments and the people whose livelihoods depend on them. The majority of academic work on climate change impacts has investi gated biophysical assessments and responses to these environmental stressors. While scholars have begun to explore the social, economic, and policy aspects of adaptation to these biophysical changes, much of this work remains primarily theoretical.

Although this study was specific to the U.S. West Coast shellfish aquaculture industry, its relevance and linkages to the broader field of adaptive capacity are readily evident.

Methods

It was conducted semi-structured interviews with the owners and/or primary managers of aquaculture operations in the three focal regions (Figure 1), with three to four inter views conducted per region. Inter views were designed to address the outlined research questions, using guides from past fisheries work in the region as an underlying framework.

The guide was pre-tested with shell fish aquaculture experts to ensure the questions were clear and relevant.

One such system for which cli mate adaptation will be critical in coming years is marine aquaculture, especially shellfish aquaculture (de fined here as culture of bivalves and mollusks). Relatively little is known about how aquaculture operators, and the extended communities reli ant on aquaculture operations, per ceive and respond to ocean acidifica tion (OA) and other environmental stressors, or about specific actions they have taken or needs they have to prepare for or mitigate environ mental stressors. As such, shellfish aquaculture serves as an opportu nity to conduct integrative research on social-ecological systems that improves the understanding of adaptive capacity in the face of cur rent and future climate impacts.

In the state of California, new attention has gone toward aqua culture, with investment in aqua culture-related research and the development of a state-wide aqua culture plan. However, this region is uniquely exposed to climate changeinduced stress via OA and other en vironmental stressors, which can be of particular concern for shellfish aquaculture. The research presented focus on shellfish aquaculture in three focal regions of the state of California: Humboldt, Point Reyes, and the Central Coast.

Interviews were coded for themes using the software Atlas.ti, with analy ses performed in R (Atlas.ti, 2021; R Core Team, 2018). Based on the inter views, it was generated a first set of codes to analyze interviewees’ percep tions of environmental change. Inter view transcriptions were reviewed to generate a comprehensive list of en vironmental factors that interviewees observed to be changing or believed were impacting their operations. This initial list was then reviewed and re fined to develop an environmental factor codebook of 17 unique types of change observations. After gen erating this list of strategies from in terviews, it was reviewed the list for themes and refined the list to develop an adaptive strategy codebook.

Findings

California’s regional aquaculture landscape

Interviews were requested with repre sentatives from 13 shellfish operations across all of these regions combined, out of the 19 total operations in the state. It was received 11 responses, resulting in a sample size that repre sents over half the operations in the state (Table 1). Oysters were the most common species cultured by those in terviewed, and were the primary spe cies grown by 8 out of the 11 farms.

Perceptions of environmental change and impacts

Across all interviews, marine disease and pathogens were frequently men tioned as environmental impacts (Fig ure 2). This was often mentioned in general terms, for example, “There was a huge virus or something all up and down the West Coast of Ameri ca. It took out so many oysters, some farms lost 90 percent of their oyster crop, and when you’re waiting a year for something to be able to harvest it, that’s a huge loss”. However, in other cases, specific diseases or pathogens were mentioned, which included Nor ovirus, Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP), Vibrio, E. coli, and Herpesvirus. Rainfall and algal blooms were also mentioned in numerous interviews, often due to the association these factors have with marine disease and pathogens. Water temperature was also frequently noted, and in some cases, growers reported that water temperatures were becoming warmer. Carbonate chemistry factors were also mentioned by many growers, but unlike all other environmental factors depicted in Figure 2, growers were specifically prompted for whether they thought they had experienced OA-derived changes or impacts, mak ing it challenging to evaluate grower perceptions of the relative signifi cance of OA compared to other fac tors mentioned.

Adaptive capacity strategies

Given the myriad of stressors and impacts growers experience, inter viewees identified a variety of po tential associated adaptive strategies to ensure their operations survive change from both OA and broader environmental, social, economic, or regulatory challenges. The specific strategies discussed by growers can be described by three overarching categories, 1) adapting regulatory policies and networking with exter nal partners, 2) flexible strategies for farm management, and 3) drawing on scientific research and expertise.

1. Policy and networking. The most frequently discussed strat egies fell within the policy and networking category, with per mitting/regulatory changes and network development/reliance being the most commonly dis cussed adaptive strategies (Fig ure 3). When permitting and regulations were discussed, this typically came in the form of commentary that difficult, ex

pensive, and time-consuming permitting processes inhibited overall ability to adapt or remain resilient to change, a challenge that has been described previ ously regarding aquaculture in both California and the United States more broadly.

2. Farm management. Growers mentioned a number of practi cal strategies surrounding the

operations and management of shellfish farms that can facilitate adaptive capacity. Often, this came in the form of strategies allowing increased flexibility in the species or life stage cultured, or in the methods or location of the culture. Culturing numer ous or additional species and life-stages provided a type of in surance – akin to the ‘portfolio effect’ applied in both ecologi cal and economic fields. In this way, growers’ businesses could maintain income and opera tions if one species or life-stage fared more poorly than the other due to mortality events, market shifts, or other factors. Some growers identified this as a strat egy that was likely to become more necessary in the future, to diversify their products and en sure a stable income under vari able ocean conditions. Growers also expressed a desire to alter or expand culture methods, equip ment, or location to generate greater flexibility in operations.

3. Science. The need to better understand drivers of shellfish health and mortality was men tioned in all but one of the in terviews (Figure 3). Mortality events can be severe, and period ically lead to loss of the majority of shellfish in some lease areas or hatcheries

Discussion

Facilitating adaptive strategies

Interviews with growers revealed numerous environmental and other stressors affecting California’s shell fish industry and identified multiple strategies available to facilitate the industry’s ability to adapt to these stressors. Adaptive strategies were of ten directly linked, in that reduction of one stressor could allow growers to allocate resources towards imple mentation of a strategy targeting oth er stressors. In particular, growers’ ability to implement a given adaptive strategy could often be facilitated by a modified permitting process. Indeed, the most frequently cited approach for adaptation was modified or expe

dited permitting and regulatory pro cesses, as obtaining permits and com plying with regulations are necessary precursors to making changes in most farm management practices, and per mitting challenges acted as a barrier to slow or prohibit the implementa tion of such strategies. For example, strategies such as the cultivation of additional species or the adjustment of gear or gear placement were chal lenged by the ability to get permits to implement these approaches, par ticularly on the time frames needed to keep pace with environmental change. Similarly, adaptive strategies relating to networking and scientific partnerships require a significant in vestment of growers’ time, much of which is currently devoted to navi gating complex or opaque permitting and regulatory processes.

Implications for adaptive capacity

Although this study was specific to the U.S. West Coast shellfish aqua culture industry, its relevance and linkages to the broader field of adap tive capacity are readily evident. The

described strategies, while tailored to this specific community, can be more broadly categorized into domains of adaptive capacity observed across communities and geographies.

In one synthesis on the subject, Cinner et al. (2018) identifies five common domains of adaptive capac ity: Assets, Flexibility, Social Orga nization, Learning, and Agency. By cross-examining these five domains and the grower-identified strategies, it is seen they can be operationalized across all 18 of the strategies (Table 3). For instance, within the ‘flexibil ity’ domain, many of the described farm management strategies rely on a need for flexibility - such as the desire to alter the species or gear used for culture (‘species’ and ‘method/gear type’) or the ability to move equip ment around their lease area (‘spatial flexibility’).

Similarly, growers identified nu merous ‘assets’ needed to implement these strategies, for instance, access to the necessary equipment (‘meth ods/gear’) or facility types, such as a hatchery and a grow-out space (‘mul tiple life cycle stages’). The ‘social or ganization’ domain is evident in the growers’ reliance on and desire to im prove their networks to gain informa

tion and share data. Strategies falling within the ‘learning’ domain are clear in the identified scientific gaps, such as the desire for more information on the drivers of shellfish mortality or on OA conditions.

Conclusions

California shellfish farmers directly observe and experience numerous en vironmental changes, some of which are more easily observed or measured. While most growers expressed con cern for changing ocean conditions, it was often challenging for growers to make direct links between outcomes to their operations and changes that could not be easily observed or mea sured. In particular, linking impacts or outcomes to OA posed challenges in their ability to implement direct responses. Rather, OA was perceived more as an unknown and potential stress multiplier, and growers instead identified (and in many cases are im plementing) a number of strategies that could help them adapt to chang es resulting from environmental, eco nomic, or political stressors.

Some strategies directly targeted OA (e.g., improving pH monitoring or developing OA-resistant brood stock), but the broad range of strate

Although this study was specific to the U.S. West Coast shellfish aquaculture industry, its relevance and linkages to the broader field of adaptive capacity are readily evident.

gies supported adaptation to multiple diverse stressors to facilitate increased farm resilience. Facilitating adaptive capacity requires a coordinated ap proach that recognizes the intercon nected nature of stressors and associ ated strategies, whereby reducing one type of stressor may allow growers to proactively allocate resources to wards implementation of adaptive strategies relating to other stressors in order to improve overall resilience.

By evaluating aquaculture opera tor-identified adaptive strategies and key challenges to their implementa tion, this work makes evident the need for improved policies, coordi nation, and scientific advances within the shellfish aquaculture industry and associated agencies.

This is a summarized version developed by the editorial team of Aquaculture Magazine based on the review article titled “CALIFORNIA SHELLFISH FARMERS: PERCEPTIONS OF CHANGING OCEAN CONDITIONS AND STRATEGIES FOR ADAPTIVE CAPACITY” developed by: MELISSA WARD -San Diego State University; ANA K. SPALDING, Oregon State University, School of Public Policy, Coiba Research Station; ARIELLE LEVINE - San Diego State University; ERIKA ALLEN WOLTERS- Oregon State University. The original version, including tables and figures, was published on MARCH, 2022, through OCEAN AND COASTAL MANAGEMENT. The full version can be accesed online through this link: https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2022.106155

Inside Aquaticode

By: Aquaculture Magazine Editorial Team*

What’s inside an AI company that disrupted the salmon farming industry with a technological breakthrough and six million dollars in its first external round of fundraising?

Aquaculture Magazine spoke with Al Brenner (Chairman) and Stian Rognlid (CEO) about the arrival of this company on the map of the global aquaculture industry, who they are, where they come from, what they do, and what contribution they will make to the development of the aquaculture world. And you know what... they really do come with great technical offerings.

Aquaculture Magazine: Can you tell us a little bit about your company and the type of technol ogy you are bringing to the aquacul ture industry?

Al Brenner (Chairman): Aquaticode was launched by Nacre Capital, which in turn was founded by Moti Shniberg, a successful serial entrepreneur and inventor in the AI space. Nacre Capital specializes in machine vision technologies in the life sciences. Other portfolio com panies include FDNA, which de tects rare diseases in children, SeedX, which predicts whether a seed

will germinate or not, and Fairtility, which increases the success of IVF. We looked at several sectors and quickly realized there was a sizable opportunity within aquaculture. The industry is growing, but there are biological barriers to efficiency and growth. We also saw an industry that we think is important to decreasing the exploitation of the planets re sources. The oceans are dying. We believe that aquaculture is the only viable solution.

Aquaculture Magazine: How did you guys get into the salmon aquaculture business and how did you figure out where the opportuni ties were?

Al Brenner (Chairman): The first thing we did was talk to the market, try to understand the needs, and plan a proof-of-concept to see if our AI and machine vision capa bilities could solve significant chal lenges in the industry. We devel oped our first set of solutions for the sector and saw that the industry had a genuine interest in innovation.

This has led to us launching our two products in September. Both can identify the sex of juvenile salmon using non-invasive methods. The big question is: Can you produce significant results? We want to bring real commercial solutions to the market. I am not interested in telling stories just to create a buzz, which is why we largely have stayed out of the public eye – until now.

Aquaculture Magazine: So, we can say that you are a company that provides AI solutions for the aqua culture industry, and you want to fo cus on salmon and shrimp.

Stian Rognlid (CEO): Our core competency is machine learn ing, but we can develop both soft

ware and hardware. One of the products we are launching can sort up to 10,000 fish per hour. So that mechanical side – the muscle that does what our brain tells it to dois also very important. If you look at our organizational chart, you will see that we are rigged to deliver on our promises to the market. We have a strong base of technologists within AI research and engineering as well as automation, aquaculture, and product development expertise. They have the capability and drive to get things done.

Aquaculture Magazine: When you talk about shrimp aquaculture industry, have you already identified some areas where you can work on it?

Al Brenner (Chairman): In shrimp farming, the focus is different because the challenges are different. Diseases are widespread. So we focus on identifying the problem, the diag nostics side of things. Early detection and prediction give shrimp farmers decision tools to help combat the dev astating effect of an outbreak.

Aquaculture Magazine: This will most likely be based on machine vision?

Al Brenner (Chairman): Yes, that is what we are talking about. Us ing machine vision for pathology. We have been researching this for more than 18 months now in collaboration with two large farmers, as well as a feed company.

Aquaculture Magazine: Do you think this AI tool could be ready early next year?

Stian Rognlid (CEO): I would say the first half of 2023, based on what we know right now. Shrimp is an important part of aquaculture, and we are putting considerable ef fort into creating something that we think will help the segment reach its potential. We are working to devel op more accurate analysis, stronger predictions and ultimately improve decision making.

Aquaculture Magazine: Now, this is going to be a very interest ing thing, you know, the industry is losing an enormous amount of money on disease. It’s a case of col lapse. And that has always been up and down, up and down, up and down in a single situation of disease problems. Developing tools to help growers easily and quickly identify diseases and find a solution could be very useful for the industry. How is this AI technology being received by the industry?

Stian Rognlid (CEO): The in dustry has an open mindset when it comes to technology. We are see ing a genuine drive to evolve - and that motivates us. The machines we are producing is a response to the demand we are seeing. At the same time, we have several ongoing re search partnerships. The recent fundraising round has given us leg room to both scale up, while accel erating our R&D activities. Earlystage companies can have a hard time balancing the short term need for pushing out products and the longer term need for innovation. We are fortunate that we don’t have to choose one over the other. And that’s important, because the high impact breakthroughs will come from areas we have yet to consider. We need to keep pushing the limits. That’s why we are here.

Aquaculture Magazine: Are there other areas you are working on besides machine? Will you be looking into automation or any oth er technology?

Al Brenner (Chairman): It is a combination. We are a software company first. That’s in our DNA. But we also need to build hardware,

and we have done that. We have cre ated a high-speed sorting machine for the salmon industry that auto mate processes which are currently being performed. Because we are a software company, we can launch something today and add significant functionality to it through over-theair updates. This includes functions that rely on miniscule patterns hu mans cannot detect.

Aquaculture Magazine: It is good to know what you are doing. I hope you will continue to grow. I think shrimp aquaculture is a very good opportunity for you, because in this industry, many processes need to be automated. But it is diffi cult to standardize the technological tools in shrimp farms because they are developed in different produc tion systems, in different geographi cal regions, each with very specific characteristics. This will be an inter esting challenge for you.

Stian Rognlid (CEO): When it comes to machine learning and arti ficial intelligence, diversity is impor tant. You can develop a product that works well in a tank, pond, batch or even population, but because ma chine learning algorithms are inher ently very sensitive, you need to be sure that you put in the work – and skill – to make it work in different production environments.

Salvador Meza is Editor & Publisher of Aquaculture Magazine.

Al Brenner.

Stian Rognlid.

Evaluation of a Recirculating Aquaculture System research facility designed to address current knowledge Needs in atlantic salmon production

By: Aquaculture Magazine Editorial Team*

A better understanding of recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) biosecurity is crucial for the sustainable and ethical production of Atlantic salmon in these systems. We present a study that describes and evaluates the performance of a RAS facility for fish infection research with Atlantic salmon as the main animal model. It is an important reference for the design of future experiments in RAS facilities, and also for developing new knowledge to improve the RAS biosecurity in the Atlantic salmon aquaculture industry.

Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) is one of the world’s ma jor farmed finfish species with an annual produc tion of around 2.4 million tons (FAO, 2020). Its aquaculture production cycle comprises two distinct phases: a land-based smolt production followed by a grow-out phase in sea cages until market size. Recently, the land-based production has been shifting from us ing traditional flow-through systems toward recirculating aquaculture sys tems (RASs). The increased adoption of RASs to produce smolts and postsmolts is partially due to the benefits of a controlled production environ ment, including reduction of negative environmental impacts, a flexible lo cation, and high biosecurity.

In theory, biosecurity is tighter in RASs than in other production sys tems such as flow-through systems, although pathogen breaches are still occurring and causing mass mortal ity events and high economic losses. Adversity of pathogens ranging from

bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites may infect fish cultured in RASs. In sal monid RAS-based farming, infectious pancreatic necrosis virus (IPNV), the bacterial gill disease agents Flavobacteri um spp. and Ca. Branchiomonas cysticola, or enteric red mouth disease agent Yer

sinia ruckeri are among the pathogens that pose a serious problem.

The development of disinfection strategies to control pathogen out breaks in the culture water and wa ter treatment units in RASs without negatively affecting fish health and welfare or the nitrifying bacteria com munity in the biofilters is challenging. We present a study that describe and evaluate a novel RAS facility for fish pathogens research with a focus on Atlantic salmon as an animal model.

Materials and Methods

The experimental trials were carried out at the fish health laboratory of the Tromsø Aquaculture research station (Havbruksstasjonen i Tromsø AS, Kårvik, Norway) (Figure 1).

The nine individual RAS units are located in one of the infection rooms of the research facility (Fig ure 2). Each individual RAS contains a cylinder conical experimental tank (V = 0.5 m3) with a dual outlet drain, an emergency oxygen stone, and a sensor for oxygen and temperature (Oxyguard R, Farum, Denmark). The water flow scheme across the differ ent RAS units is shown in Figure 3. Briefly, the water flows out of the fish tank via a bottom center outlet and a sidewall outlet into a microscreen drum filter with a 40-μm screen to remove suspended solids. The back wash discharged from the micro screen is piped to a septic tank and to an underground pipe circuit (500 m long) where water is heated and dis infected (89ºC for 15 min.). The mi croscreen drum filtrate flows into the moving bed bioreactor (MBBR, V = 0.2 m3, 50% filled with bio-media).

During the experiments, the RAS units were operating without the ozone generator and UV-C units as these units were added to the RAS posteriorly to the experiment’s con clusion. The bio-media was pre-accli matized for ∼3–6 weeks using sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) and ammo nium chloride (NH4Cl) solutions (Per makem AS, Lørenskog, Norway).

The current RAS

and July 2021 were used to evaluate the RAS units:

Atlantic salmon eyed eggs (Aqua Gen Atlantic QTL-innOva PRIME, AquaGen AS, Trondheim, Norway) were hatched and fish were raised in a flow-through system at ± 7.5ºC under continuous light photoperiod until ∼10–26 g of body weight. Fish were fed continuously (∼23 h/day) to satiation with commercial diets (1 and 2 mm pellet size, Nutra Olympic, Skretting, Norway) delivered through an automatic belt feeder. In experi ment 5, fish were fed an experimental diet formulated for Atlantic salmon parr-smolt (2- and 3-mm pellet size, Nofima AS, Bergen, Norway).

Biological data, water quality, and system management parameters from five independent experimental trials conducted between September 2020

Experiment 1—A Pathogen Challenge Model: Make-Up. Wa ter Vector. A total of 495 juvenile Atlantic salmon (± 12 g) were ran domly distributed among the nine RAS units. The fish were subjected to one of three treatments in trip licate. Treatments consisted of a control group, where fish were not exposed to Y. ruckeri; a single entry group, where fish were exposed one time to a 24-h culture of Y. ruckeri administered via the make-up water and, a multi-entry group, where fish were exposed to a 24-h culture of Y. ruckeri administered via the makeup water on 3 consecutive days. The experimental period lasted 15 days; the final fish weight was16 g, the bio mass was 453 g, and the overall spe cific growth rate was 1.92%/day.

Experiment 2—A Pathogen Challenge Model: Infected. Fish Vec tor. A total of 450 juvenile Atlantic salmon (± 12 g), either previously infected with Y. ruckeri or uninfected, were distributed among the nine RAS units using the following infection matrix: Control = 0 infected fish and 50 uninfected fish per RAS unit; low pathogen load = 5 infected fish and

45 uninfected fish per RAS unit and a high pathogen load = 20 infected fish and 30 uninfected fish per RAS unit. All three treatments were run in triplicates. The experimental pe riod lasted for 14 days; the final fish weight was16 g, the biomass was 493 g, and the overall specific growth rate was 2.05%/day.

Experiment 3—Chemical Dis infection: Peracetic. Acid Concentra tions. A total of 360 juvenile Atlantic salmon (± 15 g) were randomly dis tributed among the nine RAS units and acclimatized for 1 week. The fish were subjected to three differ ent treatments, with three replicated RAS per treatment. Treatments were a control (0.0 mg/L), low PAA con centration (0.1 mg/L), and a high PAA concentration (1 mg/L). The experimental trial lasted for 29 days; the final fish weight was 35 g, the bio mass was 877 g, and the overall spe cific growth was of 2.92%/day.

Experiment 4—Chemical Disin fection: Pulse vs. Continuous. PAA Administration. A total of 360 ju venile Atlantic salmon (± 26 g) were randomly distributed among the nine RAS units and acclimatized for 1 week. The fish were subjected to three different treatments, with three replicates per treatment. Treatments were control (no PAA), pulse PAA (1 mg/L every 72 h), and continu ous PAA (1 mg/L). The experimen tal trial lasted for 29 days; the final fish weight was 54 g, the biomass was 1,181 g, and the overall specific growth rate was 2.52%/day.

Experiment 5—Smoltification: Effect of Dietary Fat Levels on. ParrSmolt Transformation. A total of 990 juvenile Atlantic salmon (± 19 g) were randomly distributed among the nine RAS units and acclimatized for 1.5 weeks. Fish were subjected to three different dietary treatments in tripli cates: control diet, low-fat diet ( 5% fat), and high-fat diet (+5% fat). The parr were smoltified using a square wave photoperiodic regime consist ing of 6 weeks “winter signal” (LD

facility reuses water and this feature opens a new pathogen research area

12:12), followed by 9 weeks of LD 24:0. The experimental trial lasted for 57 days; the final fish weight was 94 g, the biomass was 4,721 g, and the over all specific growth rate was 2.81%/d.

Results

Fish Parameter Variability

Table 1 lists fish body weight and fork length figures derived from the five experimental trials at the terminal sampling. The inter-class correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.1 on average, ranging from 0.0 to 0.4. Overall, the variation within tanks (CVe) was larg er than the variation between tanks (CVß): 36 vs. 11% for weight and 6 vs. 2% for length, respectively, CVe and CVß. The largest difference was observed for the weight, where the CVe values ranged from 22 to 97%, whereas the CVß values ranged from 5 to 20%. The average realized pow er of the five experiments was 59% for weight and 47% for length. The realized power for weight presented the highest variation among experi ments, ranging from 21 to 95%. The statistical power vs. number of fish sampled for three treatment effect

sizes (small = 0.2, medium = 0.5, and large =0.8) at three ICC (0.0, 0.1, and 0.2) is shown in Figures 4A–C. Here, it is observable that: (1) statis tical power decreases with ICC in crease, (2) statistical power increases with treatment effect increase, and (3) statistical power increases with the increase of the number of fish sampled per tank.

Water Quality and System Management

Average water quality parameters from the five experimental trials are summarized in Table 2. The CVExp. values (among the five experimental trials) were on average 243.7% higher compared to CVTreat. values (within the five experimental trials). The CV Exp. values of the water quality pa rameters controlled by sensors such as dissolved oxygen, pH, and temper ature were relatively low 1.7–3.6%, whereas parameters depending on biofilter maturation level and perfor mance such as NH4-N/NH3-N and NO2-N presented a very high CV Exp. 146.4–202.6% among the five experimental trials.

Disinfection Between Experiment Trial Evaluation

The real-time RT-PCR results from all 18 swabs were negative for the presence of Y. ruckeri.

Discussion

In this study, data from five inde pendent experimental trials were used to establish a variation baseline for fish performance, water quality, and system management metrics of a novel and unique research facil ity for pathogen research in RAS. A statistical power analysis model was developed for different experimental scenarios and can be used as a tool to reduce and refine the number of animals for experimental use. More over, the design of the nine single RAS units was described in detail to facilitate the planning and design of future experiments to address bi osecurity challenges in the Atlantic salmon RAS industry.

The current RAS facility reuses water and this feature opens a new pathogen research area: how to elimi nate pathogens in water. This study evaluated the efficacy of a chemical disinfection method that combined a low-high pH cycle to eliminate pathogens, in this specific case the bacterium Y. ruckeri.

The evaluation and description of novel research facilities are impor tant for effective resource utilization, high-quality scientific output, and to raise awareness about the research facility for national and transnational collaboration.

These authors described the water treatment components, water process flow, and water quality limits for the target species, information that can be used for other research and indus try users to develop and refine their own production systems. Overall, the relatively low CVß reported in this study is a good indication that the or

der of magnitude of the tank/RAS variance is low. Consequently, the research facility shows great prom ise for the replicability of the experi mental conditions, which is especially important for complex biological and technological environments such as RAS, with the added benefit that the RAS units are independent and do not violate statistical assumptions.

Conclusion

This study describes and evaluates a RAS facility specifically designed to conduct research on Atlantic salmon pathogen infection dynamics and respective disinfection strategies. A number of four major objectives were taken into account when de signing and building this facility: (1) to establish challenge models with pathogens using in vivo fish, (2) to offer flexibility on disinfection tech nologies including ozonation, UV irradiation, and water chemicals, (3) to produce industry-relevant fish per formance and water quality within optimal levels for Atlantic salmon, and (4) to have identical and indepen dent replicated RAS units to support robust experimental designs and sta tistical data analysis. The data from the five trials analyzed indicate that the facility successfully delivers the expected results, and it is expected to be useful for developing new knowl edge to improve the RAS biosecurity in the Atlantic salmon aquaculture in dustry.

This is a summarized version developed by the editorial team of Aquaculture Magazine based on the review article titled “EVALUATION OF A RECIRCULATING AQUA CULTURE SYSTEM RESEARCH FACILITY DESIGNED TO ADDRESS CURRENT KNOWLEDGE NEEDS IN ATLANTIC SALMON PRODUCTION” developed by: VASCO C. MOTANofima AS; ANJA STRIBERNY - Nofima AS; GERHARDUS C. VERSTEGE - Nofima AS, Havbruksstasjonen i Tromsø AS; GARETH F. DIFFORD - Nofima AS, Norwegian Univer sity of Life Sciences; CARLO C. LAZADO - Nofima AS. The original article, including tables and figures, was pub lished on APRIL, 2022, through FRONTIERS IN ANIMAL SCIENCE. The full version can be accessed online through this link: doi: 10.3389/fanim.2022.876504.

Freshwater Aquaculture Development in EU and Latin-America: Insight on Production Trends and Resource Endowments

Contrary to other regions of the world, freshwater fish farming in in the European Union (EU-27) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is a marginal sub-segment of the aquaculture sector. This article provides a comparative overview of decadal changes in aquaculture production in these two territories by analyzing freshwater resource endowments and using total renewable water resources (TRWR) as an indicator of water-abundancy.]

By: Aquaculture Magazine Editorial Team*

Since the mid-1990s, nearly all growth in seafood supply has originated from aquaculture. At the global level, the contri bution of freshwater fish production to total aquaculture output increased from 55.6% to 61.2% between 1995 and 2019, indicating that the growth rate of freshwater aquaculture outpac es that of mariculture. In the Europe an Union (EU-27) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the profile of the aquaculture industry is different from the other regions, since coastal (marine or brackish water) aquaculture

dominates the sector in both regions. In 2019, freshwater aquaculture only contributed 25.0% and 27.4% to total fish production in LAC and EU-27, respectively, and the rate of its growth was lower than that of marine aqua culture in both regions.

Aquaculture Production Trends in the Two Regions

Although at the global level, freshwater aquaculture is expanding rapidly, there is spatial heterogeneity in development patterns both between regions and within each region (Figure 1).

Production in LAC

Figure 2 presents the decadal changes in Latin American freshwater aqua culture production. During this pe riod the output grew by 95% (from 476 to 927 kT), which is considerably higher than the growth rate of the global freshwater aquaculture level (60%). Brazil is by far the largest pro ducer of LAC; it is the only non-Asian country in the top 10 of the global list of freshwater aquaculture producers (ranking 7th in 2019), and the 2.1-fold growth in Brazilian production over a decade is considerably higher than in

other large global producers. However, in other major producers of LAC (Peru, Mexico, and Colombia) the sector grew at a rate even higher than in Brazil. Al together the top-4 producers (Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) account for 85% of total freshwater aquaculture output in the region, and contributed to 98% of the increment in production volume over a decade.

Production in EU

Contrary to significant development in Latin American and global freshwa ter aquaculture, output in the EU has not grown for decades. Production has slightly decreased from 284 to 280 kT over the last decade (Figure 3). Similar to Latin America, big differences exist between the development patterns of individual countries. There are marked west-east and south-north gradients in industry growth rates: aquaculture out put in most of the Western and Medi terranean countries fell, on the contrary, Eastern and Northern EU states in creased their fish production (Figure 1). EU aquaculture is heavily concen trated on two species, which altogether account for 83% of production. Rain bow trout, a predatory species predom inant in the aquaculture of Northern, Western, and Mediterranean countries, are farmed in cold-water systems.

Diversification and Emerging Species

Species diversification increases the resilience of industry by reducing its vulnerability to market shocks and spe cies-specific disease outbreaks. The di versification index (DIV) calculated for the Latin American freshwater aqua culture was reduced from 0.68 to 0.59 in the last decade, which suggests that concentration of the industry has taken place, and the sector became less diver sified at the regional level. The reduc tion in the DIV is mainly attributed to the increasing dominance of Nile tilapia in Latin American aquaculture. In Bra zil, Mexico, and Peru the diversification of fish production was reduced signifi cantly, corresponding to a development pattern where an already dominant spe

cies becomes even more dominant in production (tilapia for Mexico and Brazil, trout for Peru). This reflects that the aquaculture industry sees the opportunity in concentrating efforts,

investments, and infrastructure on the production of these species. In con trast with the Latin American fresh water aquaculture, the species diver sity slightly increased in the EU-27 in

the last years from 0.54 to 0.56. This is mainly attributed to the shrinking con tribution of trout to total production, but the increasing output of emerging species also contributes to increased diversity in European aquaculture.

Water Use and Resources in LAC and EU Aquaculture Water Resource Intensity of LAC and EU Aquaculture Production

The intensity of resource use varies widely between culture systems. Pond systems, which are the dominant en vironment for freshwater fish produc tion both globally and in LAC, are in between RAS/cage and flow-through systems in terms of water use, with footprint values between 3 and 40 m3/ kg, depending on yields, evaporation and seepage conditions at the produc tion site, and water refreshment re gime applied.

Generally, it is considered that spe cific water use has an asymptotic rela tionship with aquaculture production intensity, since more intensive produc tion systems were found to use water resources more efficiently (per kg of fish produced) than extensive produc tion systems. Results of studies as sessing water use in LAC and EU are summarized in Table 1. Calculated per kg water demands of species farmed in Latin American systems (Table 1) fall in line with finding for other re gions of the world. Although results are not supposed to be directly com pared since different studies use dif ferent methodologies with different system boundaries, it is important to note that a recent study found that in tensive tilapia culture was associated with a higher blue water footprint than extensive farming due to high flow rates of refreshing water in the former technology.

Based on data available it is esti mated that 48% of freshwater pro duction originates from flow-through pond/tank/raceway systems, 38% is produced in static-water earthen ponds, while RAS systems and cage/ pen aquaculture account for 10% and 4% of production, respectively. Under

flow-through conditions mainly trout, and to a lesser extent, African catfish, are cultured. Coldwater trout are often reared in surface water diverted from smaller water courses, while warm-wa ter catfish are farmed in subterranean geothermal water. In the pond farm ing segment, typically a semi-intensive carp-dominant polyculture is practiced with low (<1 t/ha) yields [47–49]. Contrary to Latin America, European RAS systems are constructed primar ily to farm freshwater species, mainly trout, catfishes, and sturgeons.

There are farms also that rear At lantic salmon and eel in a freshwater RAS environment. Unlike many re gions of the world, where cage farm ing is an important segment of both freshwater and marine aquaculture, in the EU cage systems are not typi cal in freshwater environments, only some facilities exist to farm carp and sturgeon in reservoirs and on cool ing water of thermal power plants. To minimize the discharge of trout farms and comply with strict environmen tal regulations, partial recirculation of water was a tendency in Denmark, one of the largest producers in the EU.

The water demand of the flowthrough trout farming segment is high (50–100 m3/kg), and this can be reduced by up to two orders of mag nitude (to 0.1–2.0 m3/kg) if systems are converted to RAS. Carp produced

in semi-intensive pond production in an Eastern European climate have a water demand of around 20 m3/kg (Table 1).

Role of Water Resources in Aquaculture Development

The aquaculture production growth requires some 5–50 m3 of water per kg of additional capacity, depending on the species and production system. Tilapia and carp aquacultures in most typical semi-intensive systems demand 10–30 m3/kg, while trout produced in conventional flow-through require more than 50 m3/kg. It was examined two regions: LAC, which are abun dant in water resources with a TRWR value of 21,476 m3/capita/year, and the EU-27, which have a TRWR less by an order of magnitude (3,041 m3/ capita/year). Growth in annual fresh water aquaculture production over the last ten years was 0.01 kg/cap (the EU) and 0.70 kg/cap (LAC).

Figure 4 plots the per-capita avail ability of annually renewed freshwater resources against per-capita growth in the aquaculture sector in the last de cade for the top 12 producing coun tries in each region. Per-capita growth if aquaculture was calculated as the difference between per-capita produc tion in 2017–2019 and in 2007–2009. Therefore, countries with increasing populations and slightly increasing

production may have negative values for per-capita change in fish produc tion (e.g., Denmark). The calculated Pearson-r correlation between the two variables is 0.53 (p = 0.08) for Latin American countries, while for Euro pean countries it is 0.75 (p < 0.01) if outlier data for Bulgaria was excluded. These values suggest a positive rela tionship between per capita freshwa ter aquaculture development and per capita freshwater availability.

In Latin America, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil are the most water-abun dant countries, and these countries are ranked 2nd, 1st, and 4th in terms of per capita aquaculture growth, re spectively. On the other hand, Cuba is characterized by the lowest water resource availability in LAC, and this corresponds to the biggest reduction in aquaculture production. Among the major freshwater fish producer coun tries in the EU, Sweden, Hungary, and Romania have the largest volume of water resources, corresponding to positive growth rates of aquaculture on a per-capita basis in these coun tries. Sweden has the highest water abundance among the major produc ers in the EU and this enables the high growth rate of trout production in flow-through systems, which have the highest water demand among Euro pean systems.

In water-poor regions, one strategy to maximize production value per m3 of water used is to farm high-value species in recirculation aquaculture systems (RAS), which minimize water footprint. RAS aquaculture (farming sturgeons, eel, catfish, trout) has de veloped rapidly, especially in the Euro pean countries where per capita water renewable resources are below 4,000 m3. Denmark, France, Germany, Po land, and Spain altogether account for 75% of RAS production in the EU.

Emission of Aquaculture

Production Aquaculture generates emissions ei ther to the air or to the aquatic space. The most pronounced environmental concerns are over (i) the release of

nitrogenous or phosphorus, which may stimulate eutrophication pro cesses in the receiving water body, and (ii) greenhouse gas (GHG) emis sion. Unlike water footprint, which is mainly generated during on-farm activities, the majority of aquaculturerelated GHGs are emitted during feed production, thus carbon footprint is largely determined by the feed conver sion rates and the ingredients used in aquafeeds. This implies that the nu tritional habit of the cultured species and the regional availability of ingre dients matching these nutritional re quirements have a major influence on climate change mitigation.

Conclusions and Perspectives

There are several factors that play a significant role in aquaculture devel opment, including market demand, environmental concerns, licensing regulations, and institutional capacity.

The LAC, accounting for one-third of the world’s total runoff, is wellendowed with currently underuti

lized renewable water resources and still has a huge scope for expansion. In the European context, it is often cited that bureaucracy and restricting environmental regulations are bar riers to growth, but it needs to be further understood whether regions poor in natural resources tend to have stricter environmental rules to ensure the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning and whether socio-economic and institutional in fluences are themselves consequences of resource scarcity. In fact, many of the European producers see the future potential of the industry rely on subsi dies, rather than expansion of physical output.

This is a summarized version developed by the editorial team of Aquaculture Magazine based on the review arti cle titled “FRESHWATER AQUACULTURE DEVELOPMENT IN EU AND LATIN-AMERICA: INSIGHT ON PRODUCTION TRENDS AND RESOURCE ENDOWMENTS” developed by: GERG ˝O GYALOG; JULIETH PAOLA CUBILLOS TOVAR; EMESE BÉKEFI - Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences. The original article was published on MAY, 2022, through SUSTAINABILITY. The full version, including tables and figures, can be accessed online through this link: 443. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14116443

PRODUCTION PERFORMANCE OF PACIFIC BLUEFIN TUNA THUNNUS ORIENTALIS

larvae and juveniles fed commercial diets and effects of switching diets

By: Aquaculture Magazine Editorial Team*

Survival rate of Pacific bluefin tuna (PBT) from hatch to juvenile is less than 2%. One reason of lower survival could be due to limited supply of live feed such as prey fish. To solve this problem, a study was placed to determine suitable formulated commercial diet to replace prey fish showing positive results.

Over the past decade, the high value of blue fin tuna at fish markets in Japan and the ris ing popularity of healthy foods in Western countries has led to farm ing and fattening of bluefin tuna in various Mediterranean countries. Bluefin tuna farming accounted for 18% of global bluefin tuna produc tion (8,954 metric tons) during 2011, and over the same period, tuna ac counted for 4% of global seafood production for human consumption. Japan consumes over 75% of global bluefin tuna landings.

Because the production of cul tured bluefin tuna mainly depends on wild-captured young fish, an in creased exploitation of young fish threatens the bluefin tuna natural re source. Therefore, it is necessary to

replace wild-caught young tuna with hatchery-produced juveniles to sus tain the tuna farming industry.

The increase in hatchery produc tion of PBT juveniles has increased the demand for live feed such as yolk-sac larvae of prey fish. The nu tritional value of minced sand lance and yolksac larvae is not always sta ble. Thus, development of formulat ed diets to replace prey fish and sand lance might increase the production of tuna farming.

The advantages of formulated di ets include freedom of choice in the ingredients and a range of pellet size and nutritional content. An unsuc cessful switch in diet could stimulate aggressive behavior and lead to high mortality. It is thus important to de termine the effect of switching di ets on growth and survival of PBT.

To date, there appears to have been no attempts to report the effect of switching diet on the production per formance of PBT larvae. Therefore, it was examined the effect of switch ing from a single commercial diet plus yolksac larvae during the weaning pe riod, to solely one of three commer cial diets after the weaning period, on the survival of PBT larvae.

Materials and Methods

Three commercial diets of marine fish, CM1, CM2, and CM3, were se lected as test diets for the feeding trials. These are widely distributed in Japan and used in various marine fish hatcheries. Yolk-sac larvae of the spangled emperor fish L. nebulosus (PF), which is commonly used for ju venile PBT production, were used as the control.

The proximate composition of test diets is shown in Table 1. The crude protein content was approxi mately 60% in all test diets. Crude lipid content was approximately 18% in all test diets except for CM2, which had slightly lower lipid con tent (14.5%). The control diet (PF) contained 66.0% crude protein and 17.5% crude lipid.

PBT larvae with an initial size of 20.2 ± 0.3 mm were randomly dis tributed into eight 500 l circular ex periment tanks at a stocking density of 300 individuals per tank (Table 2). The feeding trial was conduct ed in duplicate. Fish were sampled at the start of the feeding trial and kept frozen at -80 °C until analysis. At the end of the feeding trial, the remaining fish were stored at -80 °C and transferred to the Laboratory of Fish Nutrition, Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, for chemical analysis.

Results

Survival and growth of PBT larvae

The growth performance of PBT ju veniles over the entire rearing period is shown in Figures 1-3. Among the groups, total length and body weight of fish in the CM3 group were sig nificantly greater by the end of the experiment, followed by those in the CM1, PF, and CM2 groups (Figures 1 and 2). The growth curve for body depth for the PF group was different from the test diet groups (Figure 3). At 32 dph, body depth was signifi cantly greater in the CM3 group than in the PF group (Figure 3).

Proximate chemical composition of the carcass

Among the PF and CM1-CM3 groups, all groups had similar mois ture content. No significant differ ence was observed in protein content among the groups. However, lipid composition was significantly higher in the CM1 and CM3 groups than in the CM2 and PF groups.

Significant differences among the treatments were observed for argi

Over the past decade, the high value of bluefin tuna at fish markets in Japan and the rising popularity of healthy foods in Western countries has led to farming and fattening of bluefin tuna in various Mediterranean countries.

nine, leucine, phenylalanine, alanine, proline, tyrosine, and taurine. High aspartic acid and glutamic acid con tents were observed among the ex amined amino acids. The CM3 group had significantly higher arginine, phenylalanine, and leucine contents than the other dietary groups.

In PF, the levels of all the amino acids examined, except for glycine and taurine, were as low as nearly one third of those of the other groups. Although the essential amino acid level of free amino acids in PBT was always higher in the CM1 and CM2 groups than that of the initial fish, histidine, threonine, and valine lev els in PBT of the CM3 group were lower than those of the initial fish.

Discussion

Different growth patterns were ap parent in the PBT fed test diets and the PF. In the PF group, PBT grew almost linearly throughout the trial in terms of total length and body weight. In apparent contrast, PBT fed test diets showed higher growth rates, particularly between day 8 and 12 of the trial (28-32 dph).

In terms of body depth, the growth rate of the PF group was de pressed toward the end of the rear ing period. Conversely, as with to tal length and body weight, growth of PBT fed the test diets was rapid

between day 8 and 12 (28-32 dph). This difference could reflect the dif ferent moisture content between the test diets and PF diet, where a 14.7-fold higher moisture content was observed in the PF diet. This considerable difference might be at tributed to the differences in nutri ent contents among the PF and test diets, and consequently resulted in higher protein and lipid consump tion in the test diet groups. Consid ering that PBT showed rapid growth at approximately 25 dph when fed test diet. Among the groups, by the end of the feeding trial, the high est increase in total length was ob served in fish fed CM3. Biswas et al.

(2009) suggested that a formulated diet with 61.9% crude protein and 17.9% crude lipid could ensure good growth in PBT juveniles. In this ex periment, the CM3 diet with 61.1% crude protein and 17.4% crude lip id contained the protein and lipid proportions closest to those rec ommended by Biswas et al. (2009). Therefore, the CM3 diet should be feasible as a formulated diet for growing PBT juveniles.

The levels of seven amino acids (arginine, leucine, phenylalanine, ala nine, proline, tyrosine, and taurine) in PBT were different after being fed the test diet for seven days. This suggests that these amino acids are

affected by the dietary amino acid profile. The CM1and CM3 groups showed higher growth performance than the other dietary groups at 32 dph. The CM1 and CM3 diets con tained higher glutamic acid, glycine, and aspartic acid levels than the oth er diets.

Higher feeding activity was ob served in fish offered CM1, CM3, and PF; these diets had higher ala nine, isoleucine, leucine, methionine, and valine levels as free amino acids in relation to CM2. The total content of these free amino acids in these di ets (0.84 g, 0.68 g, and 0.91 g / 100 g dry-weight for CM1, CM3 and PF, respectively) were higher than that in CM2 (0.19 g / 100 g dry-weight).

This difference seemed to affect readily recognition and/or high pal atability of the diets and eventually induced higher survival and growth of CM1, CM3 and PF than CM2. Higher EAA indices and better growth performance was observed in CM1-3 diets. Although high est EAA index was observed in PF group, growth of the PF group was inferior to CM3 group. This could be due to very high moisture con tent in PF.

PBT showed the best growth in the CM3 group, particularly after 8 days’ post initiation of feeding when growth moved beyond that of the

PF group. Considering lower histi dine, threonine, and valine among the free amino acids of PBT fed the CM3 diet, these amino acids should be consumed and utilized to support rapid growth after 8 days’ post initia tion of feeding.

The PF group contained the highest DHA and unsaturated fatty acid proportions compared to fish in the test diet groups; this appears to be a reflection of the higher dietary DHA level of PF. Furthermore, the DHA levels of the PBT in the CM1-CM3 groups at 32 dph were lower than that at the start of the ex periment at 21dph. Conversely, the DHA level at 32 dph of PBT fed PF was higher than that at 21 dph, sug gesting that performance of PBT larvae could be affected by differ ence of DHA. However, similar or even higher growth was observed at 32 dph in PBT fed CM1-CM3 and those fed PF, implying that the DHA level in the test diets was sufficient in terms of growth promotion.

The highest DHA:EPA ratio was observed in the PF diet (6.2), fol lowed by CM3, CM1, and CM2 (2.0, 1.2, and 0.8, respectively). A high DHA:EPA ratio has been reported for marine fish eggs, larvae, and wild copepods that have been considered the natural food of marine fish lar vae and juveniles. Bell et al. (2003)

reported that these food organisms have a DHA: EPA ratio > 2, which is closest to the ratios observed in CM3 (2.0) and PF (6.2) in the pres ent study.

Feeding with CM1 during the weaning period did not appear to negatively affect acceptability of feed, even after the larvae were switched to another diet. In gen eral, it is difficult to evaluate effect of feed on fish performance when fish does not consume the test diet well. Therefore, less palatable diet is not suitable for weaning from live feed such as PF to compound diet. In apparent contrast, the result sug gests that once PBT were weaned onto CM1, they readily accepted the other diets. Collectively consider ation of the present results therefore suggests that PBT larvae can easily acclimate to a formulated diet once they are successfully weaned onto a different formulated diet with high palatability.

Conclusion Among the test diet groups, the highest survival occurred for CM1, followed by CM2 and CM3. Of the groups, the CM3 group had signifi cantly greater total length and body weight. These results suggest that PBT larvae and juveniles can read ily acclimate to formulated commer cial diets once they are successfully weaned onto a suitable formulated diet such as CM1.

aquaculturesci.64.359

This is a summarized version developed by the editorial team of Aquaculture Magazine based on the review article titled “PRODUCTION PERFORMANCE OF PACIFIC BLUEFIN TUNA THUNNUS ORIENTALIS LARVAE AND JUVENILES FED COMMERCIAL DIETS AND EFFECTS OF SWITCHING DIETS” developed by: JEONGHYEON CHO, YUTAKA HAGA - Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology; YUJI KAMIMURA, ATSUSHI AKAZAWAAmami Fish Farm Co; AKIRA ITOH - Maruha Nichiro Co and SHUICHI SATOH- Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology. The original article, including tables and figures, was published on OCTOBER, 2016, through AQUACULTURE SCIENCE. The full version can be ac cessed online through this link: https://doi.org/10.11233/

Fish Tales: How Narrative Modality, Emotion, and Transportation Influence Support for Sustainable Aquaculture

By: Aquaculture Magazine Editorial Team*

We tell stories for many reasons: to convey in formation, to build re lationships, to persuade others—or sometimes, a combination of all three. Whatever the motivation, our innate sensitivity to narrative pres ents a question that social scientists have long considered: (How) Can sto ries be harnessed to achieve attitudinal and behavioral change? (Dahlstrom et al., 2017). To date, much narra tive persuasion research has focused

During the last decade, sustainability has become an important issue in the seafood sector. Considerable research suggests narrative persuasion’s attitudinal and behavioral effects in health and environmental contexts. An online experiment was running among U.S. residents to evaluate how exposure to narrative influences transportation, emotions, and risk-benefit perceptions and, in turn, how such perceptions affect attitudes and behavioral intentions toward sustainable aquaculture.

on human health, showcasing stories functioning as persuasive tools to encourage support for policy or pro social behavior. Similarly, emerging research examines how narrative may influence attitudes, perceptions, and behavioral intentions with respect to environmental issues, such as climate change (e.g., Cooper & Nisbet, 2016). Whereas much research concludes that narrative works by “transport ing” audiences through cognitive and emotional pathways (Green & Brock,

2000, 2002), how narrative medium (i.e., text or video) influences message effectiveness is less clear (Braddock & Dillard, 2016; Zebregs et al., 2015).

The present study addresses the impact of narrative persuasion by considering a contemporary science communication issue in which both human health and environmental risks are salient—namely, sustainable aquaculture production in the United States. In specific, through an experi ment among U.S. residents, it was ex

amining how a narrative emphasizing the benefits of sustainable aquaculture may persuade individuals to support aquaculture development, how emo tion and transportation may mediate these effects, and whether communi cation medium makes a difference.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

The experiment considers how expo sure to a narrative emphasizing the advantages of sustainable aquaculture may influence risk-benefit perceptions and, in turn, how such perceptions affect subsequent attitude and behav ioral intentions. Given inconsistent findings in the literature regarding the effect of narrative medium on trans portation, the first Research Question was (RQ1): Does a narrative video lead to higher level of transportation than a narrative text?

Further, because the study will em ploy stimuli with a positive valence, compared to the no-message control, and because the process of transpor tation has been linked to emotional response, authors predict:

Hypothesis 1 (H1): Exposure to the experimental conditions (narrative video and narrative text) will decrease negative emotions (H1a) and increase positive emotions (H1b).

Hypothesis 2 (H2): Transporta tion will be positively related to both negative (H2a) and positive emotions (H2b).

Hypothesis 3 (H3): Exposure to the experimental conditions (narrative video and narrative text) will decrease risk perception (H3a) and increase benefit perception (H4b) related to sustainable aquaculture, as compared to the control condition.

Hypothesis 4 (H4): Participants in the experimental groups will re port higher support for sustainable aquaculture than those in the control group.

Finally, to assess direct and indirect effects on aquaculture policy support, and following Cooper and Nisbet (2016), it was tested a serial media tion model as illustrated in Figure 1 to examine the indirect effect of the

experimental condition on support for aquaculture, as mediated through nar rative transportation, positive (and/ or negative) emotion, risk perception, and benefit perception.

Method

The online survey was running be tween October 11 and November 7, 2019. Survey firm Qualtrics provided a sample of U.S. residents recruited through a “proprietary blend” of on line channels. The sample matched U.S. census data on three “quota vari ables” (i.e., age, income, and political ideology). In addition, the study sam ple included an approximately even split of individuals residing in urban/ suburban metropolitan areas and rural areas. The resulting sample size was 2,225.

The narrative video, was produced in collaboration with celebrity seafood chef and author Barton Seaver (Liu, 2019), featured the chef in his home kitchen where he discusses gathering seafood as a child growing up in the Chesapeake Bay to sourcing sustain able aquaculture products in his res taurants. Throughout the video, he discusses changing sentiments about

the aquaculture industry, prompted in large part by a “watershed moment” he experiences as a young chef. Seav er describes a transformation from viewing aquaculture as “farmed and dangerous” (in his early career) to his present status as an aquaculture sup porter. In his words: “[Aquaculture] is no longer an impediment to envi ronmental sustainability—rather, I see it as a gateway to it” (Liu, 2019). The narrative text condition featured a transcript of the video, introduced to participants as a segment from a docu mentary about marine aquaculture in the United States.

Key definitions

Narrative transportation: narrative: “a representation of connected events and characters that has an identifiable structure, is bounded in space and time, and contains implicit or explicit messages about the topic being ad dressed” (Kreuter et al., 2007, p. 222). Proposed by Green and Brock (2002), the transportation-imagery model seeks to analyze the sensation of be ing “lost in a book,” or so engulfed in a story that the surrounding physical world seems to fade away. This experi

ence is referred to as being “transport ed,” a process that brings about high cognitive and emotional involvement and, in turn, helps achieve persuasive effects by either augmenting storyconsistent beliefs (Green & Brock, 2000, 2002) or reducing counterargu ing.

Mediums: are the contexts in which narratives appear, from streaming vid eo to print novel, and are increasingly delivered in a variety of formats.

Results

A series of ANOVA (analysis of vari ance) and chi-square tests indicated that random assignment was success ful based on all individual characteris tics except for race. White participants were overly represented in the control

group. Participants also evaluated the narrative video more positively than the narrative text. With regard to RQ1, the narrative text generated a higher level of transportation than the narrative video. Message evaluation, seafood consumption, environmental attitude, frequency of visits to coastal areas, and political ideology were sig nificantly correlated with transpor tation. Participants who rented or owned property near the ocean were more transported than those who did not.

Negative emotion did not differ across the conditions, but the narra tive video generated higher positive emotion than the control group. Thus, H1a was not supported, but H1b was partially supported.

Message evaluation was positively related to both negative emotion and positive emotion. Environmental at titude was also significantly related to both negative emotion and positive emotion. Participants who consumed more seafood reported more negative emotion and more positive emotion. In contrast, participants who visited coastal areas more frequently reported less negative emotion and less posi tive emotion. Coastal homeowners/ renters also reported more negative emotion and more positive emotion. Interestingly, non-White participants reported more positive emotion than White participants. Male participants also reported more positive emotion than females. Older participants re ported lower negative emotion, but higher positive emotion. Transpor tation was positively related to both negative emotion and positive emo tion, supporting H2.

Compared to the control condi tion, both experimental groups re ported lower risk perception and high er benefit perception. Thus, H3 was supported. Specifically, the narrative video led to lower risk perception than the narrative text, but the two groups did not differ in benefit perception. Environmental attitude was positively related to both risk perception and benefit perception. Participants who consumed more seafood reported more risk perception and more bene fit perception, while those who visited coastal areas more frequently reported less risk perception and more ben efit perception. Coastal homeowners/ renters also reported more risk per ception and more benefit perception. Participants with higher education re ported more risk perception and more benefit perception. Income was posi tively related to benefit perception, but it was not significantly related to risk perception. Political ideology was negatively related to risk perception, but it was not significantly related to benefit perception. Minorities also re ported significantly higher risk percep tion than White participants. Males re ported higher benefit perception than

females. Message evaluation was also positively related to benefit percep tion, but it was not significantly related to risk perception.

In terms of support, the narrative video led to higher support than both the control condition and the narrative text, but there was no significant dif ference between the two latter groups. Thus, H4 was partially supported. All control variables were significantly re lated to support for aquaculture. In particular, message evaluation, seafood consumption, environmental attitude, education, income, and age were posi tively related to support; frequency of visitation to coastal areas and political ideology were negatively correlated with support. Coastal homeowners/ renters also reported more support.

Using Model 6 with the PROCESS macro (Hayes, 2013) in SPSS, which tested the serial mediation model us ing sequential regression analyses, controlling for all covariates, there was found several significant indi rect effects based on 5,000 bootstrap samples, which are shown in Figures 2 and 3. It was also employed PRO CESS Model 8 to test whether politi cal ideology or environmental attitude moderated the serial mediation (Fig ures 2 and 3). Results indicated that there were no significant moderation effects.

Discussion

Results indicate that the narrative text was more transporting than the narra

tive video conveying the same content, which is consistent with previous re search (Green et al., 2008). This result suggests that reading, as opposed to watching, a narrative may leave more room for imagination, which allows participants to be more absorbed into the story.

Results also support the effective ness of narrative as a communication strategy to facilitate public under standing of sustainable aquaculture. In particular, the narrative video, which featured a chef describing his evolving opinion about selecting aquaculture ingredients, reduced risk perception, increased benefit perception, and elic ited more positive emotion. As has re cently been demonstrated in the con text of other complex environmental issues, such as GMOs (Dinsmore et al., 2017), the results suggest the po tential to use narrative persuasion stra tegically to influence perceived risks and benefits of sustainable aquacul ture.

To this end, the results suggest that negative emotions prompt people to more carefully evaluate the potential risk of sustainable aquaculture, where as positive emotions are more likely to readily elicit support for sustainable aquaculture, perhaps because of the general good feelings people experi ence when thinking about this issue.

While the narrative stimuli devel oped for this study emphasized the positive attributes of aquaculture, fu ture research might also explore how

providing negatively valenced narra tives (e.g., emphasizing the possible environmental risks of cultivating seafood, or alternatively, the possible losses associated with not cultivating seafood) might influence support for aquaculture.

Finally, future research should consider how repeated exposure to a single narrative via multiple forms (e.g., reading a text, and then viewing a video) might influence message ef fectiveness over time. As Green et al. (2008) conclude, the combination of providing a narrative text, followed by a subsequent narrative video, may allow participants “the best of both worlds” in that they can “pace them selves and create an imagined narrative world, but on the second exposure . . . see that narrative world created for them on the screen” (p. 530). Whether this approach provokes transportation and attitudinal and behavioral effects for nonfiction content remains an im portant empirical question.

This is a summarized version developed by the editorial team of Aquaculture Magazine based on the review article titled “FISH TALES: HOW NARRATIVE MODALITY, EMOTION, AND TRANSPORTATION INFLUENCE SUPPORT FOR SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE” developed by: LAURA N. RICKARD - University of Maine; JANET Z. YANG - Uni versity at Buffalo; SIXIAO LIU - University at Buffalo and TABITHA BOZE - University of Maine. The original article was published on JANUARY, 2021, through SCIENCE COMMUNICATION. The full version, including tables and figures, can be accessed online through this link: DOI: 10.1177/1075547020987555 journals.sagepub.com/ home/scx.

Conference of Agricultural Cooperators of the Americas 2022 - USSEC

By: Marco Linné Unzueta*

On September 7-8, 2022, the Conference of Agricultural Cooperators of the Americas 2022, an iconic event of the Americas region, brought together key industry decision-makers to discuss a variety of future trends and strategies with internationally recognized speakers, subject matter experts, leading U.S. producers and industry specialists.

On September 7 and 8, 2022, the United States Soybean Export Council (USSEC), in cooperation with the United Stated Grain Council (USGC), the wheat (U.S. Wheat Asso ciates) and Rice Producers (USA Rice), organized the Conference of Agri cultural Cooperators of the Americas 2022. An emblematic event of the Americas region that brought together the industry’s key decision makers in a two-day gathering, featured interna tionally recognized speakers, experts, leading U.S. producers and industry specialists to discuss a variety of cur rent trends.

In this context, according to FAO (2016), population growth will reach 9.5 billion people by 2050, resulting in the need for an estimated additional 40 million tons of shellfish by 2030, almost double our current production for human consumption. Against this backdrop, FAO asks, “How can this deficit be overcome sustainably?”

To answer this question, we can as sume that food derived from aquacul ture will develop in such a way that “... in the next decade, the total produc tion of capture fisheries and aquacul ture will exceed that of beef, pork and poultry” (FAO, 2016). This production is of high quality from a nutritional perspective and will in turn translate into healthier diets, provided the mea sures meet Good Production Practice (GPP) and Good Manufacturing Prac tice (GMP) standards. These measures will enable the carbon footprint to be reduced through sustainability mea sures.

In light of the above, and in the context of working on strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is critical that current and future diets promote “green” diets, most of which are based on plant sources. This will require the development of strategies that promote growth, programming and standardization of production, without neglecting the increase of profitability and favoring the sustain able use of resources. It will be reflect ed in measures that allow the reduction

of emissions, the adoption of fully ef ficient technologies and work on the production of fish and shellfish, with alternative sources for the production of “friendly” food with the environ ment.

According to Doug Winter (US SEC Chairman), one of the products that should provide the greatest incen tive for aquaculture food production is SOY, a large, reliable food source on a global scale. Therefore, the USSEC seeks to add value through product differentiation that allows livestock and aquaculture activities to be granted sustainable production structures that are considered a common value from the point of view of consumption with ecological awareness and sustainability standards in soybean production.

On the other hand, Jim Sutter (CEO USSEC) who represents soy bean production in the US, considers that the Win-Win philosophy seeks to support Latin America (LATAM) with high-quality soy products that help to face the great challenges, of agricul tural and aquaculture activities, in the face of climate change. Based on what is defined by FAO in the 2030 agenda, with emphasis on CO2 emissions and sustainability, producing specifically in areas defined for agriculture, not de foresting, and having the lower carbon footprints. This will provide confi dence in consumers through education that guide decisions to have quality food and quantity.

In addition to the above, actions will be established or strengthened through the Office Global Programs of USDA/Foreign Agricultural Sci ence, actions highlighted by William Bomershein, office director. These are strategies for the production and commercialization of soybeans, seeking a global environment of benefit to the agricultural sector, es tablishing predictable rules, and pri oritizing climate change and sustain ability in food generation.

On the other hand, there are ex change programs that seek to con duct market research in different regions, mainly in emerging coun tries, through Sciences and Technol ogy Programs on policy issues for market development in low-income countries.

As part of the considerations defined at the meeting, María May orga (MS, Ph.D Regional Technical Specialist in Poultry, USSEC Ameri cas) emphasizes the increase in live stock production, which is why it is necessary to increase the produc tion of balanced feed, considering that soybean meal from the United States has achieved excellent results in terms of greater efficiency nutri tional since it provides most of the amino acids required by organisms in culture.

For her part, May Craze, Found er of Spheric Research, mentions that R+D+i must be a continuous

strategy in aquaculture develop ment, highlighting, in particular, the experience of Recirculating Systems for Aquaculture (RAS), coupled with intensive management and production levels, for which the response was the development of the In-Pond Raceway system (IPA or IPRS), which in Spanish we can translate into something like “Rapid Flow Channels within the Lagoon”, a system that, for multiple reasons such as sustainability issues, effi ciency in water-space consumption as well as the growing demand for fish from the markets, was taken up in recent years with the impetus of the USSEC and evaluated in com mercial environments with excellent results.

Finally, Jairo Amézquita, Manag er of Regional Aquaculture Projects, USSEC Americas, mentioned that to achieve the goals established during the meeting, “collaboration, resilient capacity, investment capital” should be considered and that LATAM has the tools and investments necessary for innovation in aquaculture, with the support of the production of quality inputs through the long-term production of American soybeans, under standards of sustainable prac tices that allow the development of sustainable strategies in the immedi ate term, including robotics, nano technology, biofortification, vertical crops, among others.

The new Mesoamerican Network of Small-scale Aquaculture Farmers

By: Alejandro Flores*

The new Mesoamerican Committee, which includes the national fisheries and aquaculture authorities of Mexico and Central American countries, as well as national and regional associations of artisanal fishers, small aquaculture enterprises, and civil society organizations, was sponsored by the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean.

In the framework of the Inter national Year of Artisanal Fish eries and Aquaculture (2022), proclaimed by the United Na tions General Assembly and whose global promotion has been entrust ed to FAO, with the aim of raising awareness in world society of the social and nutritional importance of these subsectors, the FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Ca ribbean promoted the establishment of three subregional committees, including the Mesoamerican Com mittee to celebrate this important in ternational milestone (AIPAA-2022, Committee).

The committee includes the na tional fisheries and aquaculture au thorities of Mexico and Central American countries, the latter rep resented by the Organization of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Sector of the Central American Isthmus (OS PESCA), as well as national and re gional associations of artisanal fish ers, small aquaculture enterprises, and civil society organizations, coordinat ed by FAO. An action plan was cre ated that prioritizes various activities, including those aimed at including workers in the artisanal fisheries and aquaculture production and value chains in social protection systems, and those focused on strengthening their organization, associativity, and international articulation.

In this context, the lack of coor dination, exchange and cooperation mechanisms among small aquacul ture organizations in the region was noted, unlike their counterparts in ar tisanal fisheries, which have consoli dated their exchange of experiences and strengthened their negotiating position in international forums.

Due to the weakness of national aquaculture registration systems, it is not possible to reliably determine the number of aquiculture produc ers with limited resources, as well as micro and small farms in the region. However, it is estimated that there are approximately 18,000 microproducers engaged in aquaculture in Mesoamerican countries that are geo graphically dispersed and include in digenous groups, women, and youth, many of whom operate in the infor mal sector and are consequently ex cluded from the benefits that the offi cial programs have created to support them.

Because of their small scale of production and their various limita tions, their best way to overcome ad versity and take advantage of market opportunities or economics of scale that allow them to sustain themselves and, ideally, to evolve, is to strengthen their internal organization, their as sociativity, their interorganizational articulation and the promotion of technological cooperation; to con solidate their purchase of supplies or joint marketing, both locally and regionally. The possibilities offered

by digital information technologies

undoubtedly make it possible to take advantage of the benefits and oppor tunities beyond one’s own borders.

With this premise, the Mesoamer ican Committee of AIPAA-2022 has decided to promote the creation of the Mesoamerican Network of Small Aquiculture Farmers, which has de veloped in recent months and will be officially launched on August 30 of this year. The objective of the network is to promote collaboration and exchange of knowledge and ex periences that contribute to inclusive development of associations from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Dominican Republic, the founders of this international mechanism.

This new Network will operate with a simple structure and has cho sen Dr. Francisco Martinez of Red Tilapia Mexico as founding coor dinator, and Mr., Bily Cazali, of the Guatemalan Tilapia Chain as deputy coordinator. They already have an action plan that includes various measures for exchange and capacity building through virtual channels, and it is proposed to manage the acces sion of other associations in the re gion that are aquaculture enterprises with limited resources and micro and small enterprises, which will ensure horizontal cooperation. FAO and OSPESCA have been included as ob server organizations and will provide technical support to their processes. Undoubtedly, the experience of other

networks already working for mutual benefit will be incorporated into this new international mechanism.

We are pleased to see the cre ation of this important mechanism and wish it every success, reiterating FAO’s willingness to accompany its efforts as we hope they will have a positive impact on food security and local economies.

The AIPAA-2022 committee includes the national fisheries and aquaculture authorities of Mexico and Central American countries, as well as national and regional associations of artisanal fishers, small aquaculture enterprises, and civil society organizations, coordinated by FAO.

* FAO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, Santiago, Chile | www.fao.org

The 35th COFI Session from Rome

By: Antonio Garza de Yta, Ph.D.* Aquaculture without Frontiers (AwF) President

Iarrived in Rome to attend the Committee on Fisheries (COFI) for the fifth time with great expectations of what could happen in this 35th edition of COFI, although I have a lump in my throat because I do not want my son to grow up without me for a week. No matter how you get to Rome, the city does not disappoint and makes visitors fall in love with it all over again every time they travel.

I arrived in Rome to participate in the Committee on Fisheries (COFI) for the fifth time, with great expectations of what might happen in this 35th edition of COFI. The hybrid event allows progress in an agenda dominated by the celebrating of the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture and very important issues. But, from my perspective, not as a representative of any organization, it is not enough.

COFI’s history is different, however, because for reasons of COVID, you will not arrive at a vibrant and lively FAO headquarters. However, you will be welcomed into a building that still lives with COVID protocols and feels soulless and sad.

Currently, due to health protocols, very few employees go to work every day, they do so from home, and this is used to renovate large sections of the building. The protocols also mean

that not all the participants are in the same areas. Delegates (2 per country) are invited into the entire room, while delegates who exceed the allowed number must sit in the red room and observers all stay in the green room. For whatever reason, people feel isolated and opportunities to inter act with colleagues from around the world are severely limited.

The hybrid event allows progress to be made on an agenda dominated

by the celebrations of the Interna tional Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture, where, as usual, praise is heaped on all participants. Despite all this, the few FAO staff who are al lowed to attend are dynamic and en thusiastic about the event, while the rest have to follow the proceedings virtually from home or the office. No matter how hard I try, I do not think I’ll ever get used to this modality that is here to stay. Fundamental issues for the sector are discussed, such as the reducing illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing. Necessary measures to com bat climate change and the impor tance of maintaining biodiversity in fishery and aquaculture, as well as the

Our commitment to humanity must be to get aquaculture on the agenda and in the budgets of our countries.

recommendations of the Aquacul ture Committee. They are all very im portant, but from my point of view, not as a representative of any organi zation, it is not enough.

It is a sad fact that what we had experienced is no longer lived with the same emotion and intensity. As the years go by, one gradually loses the capacity for wonder. Maybe that’s what happened to me with COFI, or maybe things have just changed a bit, but underneath all the glamor that these committees represent or used to represent, a little vision and passion is necessary. It’s essential that we have a clear vision for aquaculture that we all see 20 or 30 years from now.

Maybe that vision will not be the same depending on the region or country, but we need to know that too. By putting the Shanghai Declara tion in the freezer in the last subcom mittee on aquaculture, for whatever reasons that were not technical, we deprived ourselves of the opportuni ty to envision a world where aquacul ture is a priority and where its goal is to lift families out of poverty through well-paying jobs and not be the last option for many. I believe that deac tivation of the Shanghai Declaration significantly delays the Blue Trans

formation and the consolidation of aquaculture on a global scale.

I know I am probably a voice in the wilderness, but I would like to call today on all my scientific friends, pol icy makers, and aquaculture profes sionals to join forces and implement many of the points in the Shanghai Declaration as soon as possible. I be lieve that FAO has done its job and a years-long effort has not material ized for reasons beyond its control. It is we who must hold the reins and no one else. Regardless of nationali ties, creeds, or ideologies, our com mitment to humanity must be to get aquaculture on the agenda and in the budgets of our countries. Let us con tinue together on the road to blue transformation!

WAS President 2021 - 2022. Antonio Garza de Yta, Presi dent, Aquaculture without Frontiers (AwF), a renowned international aquaculture professional, who holds a Mas ters degree and a Ph.D. in Aquaculture from the University of Auburn, USA. He is an aquaculture expert, FAO frequent consultant, as well as a specialist in strategic planning. Ex-director of Extension and International Training for the University of Auburn and creator of the Certification for Aquaculture Professionals in that academic institution.

The lure of high-density shrimp culture and why it can be risky

By: Ph.D. Stephen G. Newman*

Shrimp farming is perhaps the fastest growing aquaculture sector globally. Total produc tion has been estimated to exceed 5 million MTs in 2022 with no indications that it is slowing down. As shrimp farming paradigms con tinue to evolve and adapt to the reali ties of what appears to be the evergrowing demand for farmed shrimp,

the natural tendency has been to in crease stocking densities. For many years the standard production model in the Americas was low density cul ture in large ponds. Ponds were rarely aerated, organic matter was allowed to accumulate often to toxic levels, feeding was largely inefficient, and consistency of outcomes was highly variable. In Asia land is not as read

ily available (costs more) and smaller ponds are the only realistic option. The production model early on was small dirt ponds with some additional aeration. Similar issues with consis tency of productivity

As the pond sizes shrink, technol ogy comes into play. Several factors are important for success and to al low stocking densities to increase.

It is well known that the higher the density of a given population the greater the potential is for pathogens to move between animals. Shrimp are not an exception.

1. The use of aerators to ensure adequate oxygen levels reduces stress on the animals and ensures a healthier overall environment.

2. Lining of ponds with plastic lin ers prevents heavy accumulation of sediments and their chemical impact on the pond chemistry and thus the animals.

3. Pond engineering designs that al lowed organic detritus, a natural part of the process, to be con centrated in the central area of the ponds in sumps. These are drained periodically during pro duction and held in sedimenta tion (responsible aquaculture practice) or dumped into the en vironment untreated (irrespon sible).

4. The use of automatic feeders that avoid waste of feed.

5. Properly formulated feeds that contain sufficient digestible pro tein levels, minerals and vitamins.

6. The use of bioremediation with bacteria to clean up accumulat ed organic matter, limiting the amount of toxic compound pro duction.

For several decades efforts have been underway to domesticate the

mostly widely farmed species, Penaeus vannamei (also called Litopenaeus van namei). This has been a slow process with incremental progress. At the cutting edge are the animals that CP Thailand has produced. These are fast-growing, pathogen tolerant and high-density (stress) tolerant animals. They are free of all known pathogens and through methodical testing and following animal histories are free of any other as of yet uncharacterized pathogens. This pristine status is what allows farmers who ensure that the animals are not contaminated with local pathogens to reap the benefits of these animals. Most workers in the field will tell you P. vannamei can be considered to be domesticated. Ef forts are underway with other species.

Densities above 300 m2 are not uncommon. Survivals can be high, in the 90% range and growth is noth ing short of spectacular with 30 gram plus animals taking 60 days or so to get there under the best of circumstances. Coefficients of varia tion (CoV) are measures of overall productivity. There is very little size variation (CoV) between animals at harvest. When they are low it is an indicator of high animal health

and consistent performance. When they are high it is an indicator of the presence of certain pathogens and a population lack of consistent per formance. This could be a result of stressors including low DO levels, lack of feed (automatic on-demand feeders solve this), high levels of ac cumulated organics in the production environment, IHHNV, etc.

All of these positive results have a critical component. Without this, the risks of disease increase signifi cantly as the densities increase. This is that you must start with clean ani mals. These are free of known and when properly produced, unknown, pathogens. When they become con taminated, the potential is not real ized and there can be massive losses. Starting out with clean broodstock is the first step. Feeding them biosecure feeds to stimulate maximum fecun dity is next. Maintaining them in an environment where there is no input of potential sources of pathogens must be assured. In some instances, when a facility is close to the Ocean or to neighbors who have disease is sues, this has to include positive air flow to prevent airborne vibrios and other potential pathogens from en tering the facility. They should be spawned under conditions that also ensure that the pathogen free integ rity is maintained. This includes ad equate disinfection.

Once nauplii are stocked, they must be held in biosecure environ ments. This means that when they molt into Zoea that they are not be ing fed algae and or Artemia that have been produced in a manner that is not biosecure. The same thing holds for the hatchery cycle. None of this is complicated.

It is well known that the higher the density of a given population the greater the potential is for pathogens to move between animals. Shrimp are not an exception. Many a farmer who has been trying to grow shrimp at high densities without the aforementioned approaches has seen this. The level at

which problems occur will depend on genetics to some extent. Stress and pathogen tolerance can be bred for. It also depends on the pathogen. Some pathogens are more virulent than oth ers. This can mean that they spread easier and faster or that they initiate a serious disease process that results in rapid death. Farmers who saw the be ginnings of the virus that causes WSS saw this even at low densities. The vi ral loads exploded and many of the “normal” elements of the environ ment, such as rotifers and copepods, became infected.

This is a real risk that should be considered before increasing envi ronmental biomass loads beyond their carrying capacity. There is not a magic number for this. It will vary de pending as above on the animal, the environment, and the pathogen. It is tempting when survivals are good with rapidly growing shrimp stocked at 20 m2 to double it. Then the temp tation will be there to double it again. At some point when the animals are not free of pathogens (they can be

SPF-specific pathogen free-but this does not make them free of all patho gens) the risk of disastrous disease outbreaks increases. When ponds are built in close proximity to each other and there is no coordinated proac tive disease management strategy in place among the various farm own ers the risk increases as well that one’s persons problem becomes another’s. Their neighbors get what they have and this spreads from there.

Countries that historically have grown shrimp at the low-end den sity wise need to be cautious and work together to limit the potential for increased stocking density related animal health challenges and slowly work towards increasing the carrying capacity of the environment. There is not a set formula to follow when it comes to determining the carrying capacity. One knows that there is a problem because of poor animal per formance even when things are being done “right”. Most often in today’s world the presence of pathogens in the population is the limiting factor.

If you follow these guidelines, you will be able to gradually increase your stocking densities without increas ing the risks of massive disease out breaks. If farmers rush these things they may enjoy short term success but invariably the lack of a high level of biosecurity will cause increasing losses.

Stephen G. Newman has a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland in Conservation and Resource Management (ecology) and a Ph.D. from the University of Miami, in Marine Microbiology. He has over 40 years of experience working within a range of topics and approaches on aquaculture such as water quality, animal health, biosecurity with special focus on shrimp and salmonids. He founded Aquaintech in 1996 and continues to be CEO of this company to the present day. It is heavily focused on providing consulting services around the world on microbial technologies and biosecurity issues. sgnewm@aqua-in-tech.com www.aqua-in-tech.com www.bioremediationaquaculture.com www.sustainablegreenaquaculture.com

Some issues to ponder

A new report has hit the Fishmonger’s desk concerning issues which negatively impact our industry, it has been labelled food fraud, but it is deeper than that.

By: The Fishmonger*

Anew report has hit the Fishmonger’s desk con cerning issues which negatively impact our industry, it has been labelled food fraud, but it is deeper than that. There is nothing much new in this world assessment which covered eighty countries and seventy-two species but there are some interest ing details which we should view and ensure are examined in detail and are part of the industry standards into the future.

“The 11 sins of seafood: Assess ing a decade of food fraud reports in the global supply chain” exam ined seafood fraud incidents over the past 10 years reported via the E.U.’s Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed, Decernis’s Food Fraud Database, HorizonScan, and Lexis Nexis databases, in order to analyze the types of fraud that occur fre quently.

The eleven sins which the report highlights negatively impacts on the industry are (in no particular order):

1. Illegal, unreported, and unregu lated (IUU) fishing.

2. Species substitution.

3. Fishery substitution.

4. Species adulteration.

5. Chain of custody abuse. 6. Catch-method fraud.

7. Undeclared product extension. 8. Modern-day slavery. 9. Animal welfare.

10. Illegality related to processing methods, and

11. Illegal or unauthorized interna tional trade.

Seafood is marked as one of the main food allergens, which positions seafood as a risk to human health through accidental exposure if a species is mislabelled.

Interestingly, many of these are fishery issues and are not aquaculture related. Considering it has mainly been the fisherfolk who have been ‘anti-aquaculture’ this is a hard pill to swallow if you are an aqua-farmer and yet being impacted by bad prac tices by those that have failed to set and follow good standards. On the other hand, we are all in the seafood industry, so we need to collaborate with other likeminded people and lift the whole industry.

Let us not forget that aquafeed is mentioned in the report having been found containing the banned pesticides hexachlorobenzene and β-hexachlorocyclohexane, which are associated with adverse health out comes when consumed by humans. Additionally, it is noted the presence of ruminant DNA, which is not per mitted in aquaculture to prevent the transmission of transmissible spon giform encephalopathies. The Fish monger recalls a private report con ducted in the Middle East found that aquafeed was often treated poorly in the supply chain and rarely checked for inputs which led to many prob lems. Clearly there is always room for improvement in all we do.

The implications for food safety must be considered paramount. Sea food is marked as one of the main food allergens, which positions seafood as a risk to human health through accidental exposure if a spe

cies is mislabelled. Allergic reactions can be triggered by consumption of fish treated with illegal or unauthor ized antimicrobials routinely used in aquaculture. People in the industry need to be aware that their actions or

THE FISHMONGER

non-disclosure can result in potential systemic immuno logical reactions and anaphylaxis in vulnerable persons.

Aquaculture people can specifically engage in species substitution simply by ensuring that what you sell is sold under the legal name and do the occasional audit on your supply chain of custody to ensure those selling your prod ucts are not changing the name for any reason. Make sure your invoices and paperwork with purchases/sales are aligned regarding fish names.

Modern day slavery is a complex issue, and no country is immune and, of course, it is not a sole seafood prob lem. Fair days work for a fair day’s pay is the creed we all need to follow – that is different in every country but treating your workers with respect is not a difficult con cept. People are your main asset, and you cannot grow un less you have good systems to engage and retain people. This is not a difficult concept to grasp.

Animal welfare continues to boil away in the back ground, and it is an ideal area where the industry could get on the front foot with simple standards which are then locked in globally and even into country regulations. Get ting ahead of the pack here will stop lots of negativity into the future. Strangely, since the pandemic, have you noticed how people have focused more on their pets than other humans?

The report identified supply chain pathways vulner able to criminal practices and urged better recording of fraud cases through a standardized dataset and for ad ditional study of the current vulnerabilities and risks in the seafood supply chain, with the aim of preventing and mitigating fraudulent practices.

Of course, the researchers concluded with the warn ing that as seafood production increases to meet rising global demand, the opportunity for deceptive and illegal activity compromising the food safety of global seafood supply chains will also increase. They need to push that angle for continued funding, but the Fishmonger feels it is one of those 80/20 issues – now that does not be-little the issue or say there does not need to be improvement but the good people who do follow the rules are in the majority and they get no comfort through anyone high lighting that.

One of the failures of our industry, as The Fishmon ger has highlighted many times, is the lack of training. With better training, especially at induction, it would install a new and better culture to exist into the future. Without this training there is always a ‘cowboy’ attitude in believing that you can deceive the customer/consumer. That is a culture we do not want to prevail.

Vibrio: everything you need to know and more

The Fishmonger remembers clearly attending a Washing ton DC conference in 2005 where the presenter from US Center for Disease Control (USCDC) told the audience that there was good news. He said that only eight people

One of the failures of our industry, as The Fishmonger has highlighted many times, is the lack of training.

had died from eating oysters in the last year… having gorged on oysters the night before the Fishmonger’s brain went into overdrive!, there was no damage done but from the presen tation there was a massive learning is sue about the importance of knowing your supplier and how they operate.

The presenter gave a graphic view of what vibrio can do to the human body and how simple processes can ensure you eliminate the bug from the supply chain. It stuck in the Fish mongers mind and has always been at the forefront of decision making in any business activity.

Amazingly people do not want to eat things that may harm them… can you believe that? Sadly, that was never at top of the mind for many oyster fisherfolk who simply refused to engage the cold chain into their activities. The messages finally got

through to those people and either they changed to better practices or left the industry – either way that is a win for seafood consumers and in dustry alike!

In July 2022, SafeFish and ASQAAC co-hosted a vibrio science day in Adelaide to bring together researchers and stakeholders with an interest in vibrio research. There were a wide range of presentations on environmental & post-harvest re search, finishing with a panel discus sion delving into the gaps and next steps. A keynote presentation was provided by Dr. Jessica Jones from the USFDA which gave an excellent overview of the issue of vibrios and the research that is currently hap pening in the US.

The Science Day highlighted that in Australia this is a complex issue with testing capability (including

the imminent change in analytical methods being used) being one of the largest hurdles for the harvest/ processing sectors.

Luckily for us all the presenta tions were recorded and are now available to view from the SafeFish website: Vibrio Science Day (safe fish.com.au). The Fishmonger en courages you to take advantage and view this information so you can keep up to date.

References and sources consulted by the author on the elaboration of this article are available under previous request to our editorial staff.

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