Adapting and mitigating in the face of a changing climate

Climate change versus the seafood industry

Fishery and aquaculture stakeholders and scientists from the Nordic countries met in December in Elsinore, Denmark, to address the challenges posed by climate change at a workshop organised jointly by the Nordic Marine Think Tank and ICES, with support from the Nordic Council of Ministers.

The energy used by the Icelandic processing industry has declined 85% since the 80s and will soon be entirely from renewable resources.

The workshop reviewed recent research and initiatives concerning the challenges of climate change for sheries and aquaculture, and attempted to synthesise expertise, practical experiences, and lessons learned. e longer aim was to launch the Nordic Climate Change Forum for Fisheries and Aquaculture to provide a platform for the Nordic sheries and aquaculture sectors to exchange knowledge, ideas, and practices. e workshop was chaired by Árni M. Mathiesen, former shery minister of Iceland.

e world’s oceans are at grave risk and so are the world’s capture sheries and aquaculture. e workshop considered climate change as two sides of the same coin: How can the shing and aquaculture industries adapt to the sometimescatastrophic shifts caused by climate change, and how can these industries mitigate their own contribution to the mechanisms that are causing the climate to change? Simply put then, the solutions to the challenges posed by climate change are to adapt by adjusting to current and future e ects of climate change and mitigate by minimising the sectors’ carbon footprints by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs), thus reducing the impacts of climate change.

Climate change versus the ocean

Workshop presenters described various ways that progress has been made by the shery and aquaculture sectors in reducing

their carbon footprints, but less has been accomplished in adapting to the changing conditions that are already being felt. e dangers posed by climate change to sheries and aquaculture are well known. Changes include warming of the atmosphere and the oceans, changes in rainfall patterns, and increased frequency of extreme weather events. e oceans are becoming increasingly saline and acidic, a ecting the physiology and behaviour of many aquatic species and altering productivity, habitats, and migration patterns. Sea level rise and stronger storms threaten coastal communities and ecosystems and will have a severe e ect on both onshore and o shore aquaculture facilities. e world’s coral reefs are threatened with destruction. Some inland lakes and water bodies are drying up, and destructive ooding occurs regularly around the world.

Fisheries use large amounts of fuel, which can constitute up to 60 per cent of shing costs in some sheries at today’s high prices. In commercial sheries, most of the fuel is used in vessel propulsion, but fuel is also used for activities such as onboard processing, refrigeration, and freezing. After a catch has been landed, processing, transport, and distribution add to the carbon footprint. Still, capture sheries—and aquaculture—create smaller carbon footprints than most other means of producing animal protein. For aquaculture, energy consumption is also a concern, but nearly all of aquaculture’s carbon footprint comes from the production and transport of shmeal. European aquaculture depends on imported feed or imported raw materials to produce feed, for example, from marine and terrestrial systems such as shmeal, sh oil, and soy, particularly for carnivorous species such as salmon. Substituting plant for marine ingredients just shifts the impact from sea to land.

Putting shmeal on a diet

To make the sector more sustainable, the use of marine ingredients must be reduced and replaced. Byproducts such as sh heads, frames, trimmings, skin, and organs should be utilised as ingredients. Local production using local ingredients would eliminate GHGs caused by transport. e industry is coming closer to producing a fully sustainable sh feed, but a complete solution is unlikely in the near term. Sustainable sh feed ingredients will probably supplement conventional feed ingredients for the next decade until production can be scaled. Keynote speaker Max Nielsen, Department of Food and Resource Economics, Copenhagen University, stated that aquaculture is the fastest growing animalfeed producing sector worldwide, and restated that the production of feed is responsible for most of aquaculture’s CO2 emissions, both sh- and plant-based ingredients. Although the feed conversion ratio can be reduced, decreases in CO2 will depend on lowering the dependence on foreign-sourced feed ingredients. Further, because recirculation is increasingly being used, developing sources of inexpensive green energy will be crucial. He also advocated taxes, tradable permits, and other incentives to reduce GHGs. e most successful solutions will be most coste ective.

Vidar Gundersen, the director of global sustainability for the BioMar Group, said that, in 1990, approximately 80 per cent of feed was made of marine ingredients, with some vegetable ingredients and wheat used as a binder. Today, marine ingredients make up approximately 20 per cent, but only 10 per cent of that comes from the Nordics. So, the salmon that is farmed in the Nordics is not really from the Nordics, because we—and the sh—are what we eat. We will have to double, triple, or even quadruple the production of seafood, and that will require a parallel increase in the amount of raw materials. Producers must be given incentives to produce more raw materials for Nordic sh feed. Reducing the carbon footprint also means lowering our dependence on tropical, speci cally South American, soil. Summing up, he said we will see the use of more byproducts, more ingredients from single cell technologies, and more ingredients from lower trophic levels. Still, most of the diet will be plant based.

Aquaculture contributes to emissions in different ways

Other contributions by aquaculture to GHG emissions and environmental degradation include changes in land use and deliberate deforestation to produce soybeans or palm oil for feed; spilled feed and faeces, which may contain nitrogen and phosphorus and can pollute the surrounding water; sh escapes and high concentrations of parasites (sea lice, for example) that damage both the local environment and wild sh stocks. An increasing population is putting pressure on capture sheries and aquaculture to produce. By 2050, the global population is projected to reach 9.7 billion, up from 7 billion today. To feed the growing population, 70 per cent more protein will be needed. Climate change makes it inconceivable that this expansion can take place on land alone. Nutrition from the sea is clearly the wave of the future. Protein from sh and other seafood, whether from capture sheries or aquaculture, is a very e cient way of delivering animal protein, fats, and Omega-3 fatty acids, all of which are vital nutrients.

According to the FAO, global consumption of sh has increased by 122 per cent since 1990, and aquaculture now accounts for more than 50 per cent of that. Nevertheless, in 2017, sh accounted for only about 17 per cent of total animal protein and 7 per cent of all proteins consumed globally. However, as demand grows and capture sheries approach or exceed their sustainability limit, that will change. By 2050, aquaculture will double its production and become the prime source of seafood. Several of the workshop’s participants delivered this simple message: To reduce the rise in GHGs caused by food production, farm more seafood. It is the most responsible way to produce animal protein.

Uncertainty about climate change’s consequences

Keynote speaker Professor Michaela Aschan, UiT e Arctic University of Norway, pointed out that Norwegian salmon aquaculture, which takes place along the entire Norwegian coastline, is exposed to a range of di erent climate stressors, including temperature, heatwaves, sea level rise, storms, deoxygenation, ocean acidi cation, and runo . Unlike sheries where the sh can move in response to changing conditions, sh in aquaculture are held in a speci c location and farming is in uenced by site-speci c conditions. Climate change stressors have di erent e ects depending on where production takes place, and solutions must be found for each site individually. For example, an increase in temperature in

the north will have an e ect different to the e ect it generates in the south. Likewise, stressors may a ect a sheltered site in a fjord di erently to an exposed or openocean site.

To the previous list of negative impacts on aquaculture, Professor Aschan added impacts on growth rates ( sh grow faster and mature earlier in warmer water), yields, the growing season, and increased mortality, as well as an increase in the number of escapes, predation, and harmful algal and jelly sh blooms, among many others. As for sheries, she noted that climate change is pushing sh northwards at the cost of Arctic species, and the consequences to the ecosystems cannot yet be fully modelled. Environmental management will have to integrate multiple tools and objectives to contend with unforeseen circumstances. She urged participants to develop climate adaptation plans for their businesses, municipalities, and countries.

Shifting gears to reduce the carbon footprint

Keynote speaker Sara Hornborg, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, reiterated that the use of fuel for boat propulsion dominates the carbon footprint of capture sheries, and fuel use varies considerably depending on the shery. Fishing depleted stocks requires more fuel per kilo of landed sh than shing abundant stocks, because low abundance forces shers to search longer and use heavier gear to catch sh. Larger catches and greater abundance lead to less emissions per unit of output. She noted that GHGs can be reduced signi cantly by switching from fuel-intensive techniques, such as dredging, bottom trawling, and beam trawling, to alternative techniques such as creel or trap shing, Danish seine, and gillnet. Environmental pressures common to both capture sheries and aquaculture include energy consumption, the release of GHGs and other toxic emissions, plastic pollution, disturbance of the seabed, and invasive species.

Emissions from the shing industry are dominated by the fuel used for the propulsion of shing vessels.

Reduce GHG through suitable incentives and disincentives

Max Nielsen focused on mitigation from an economic point of view. He noted that mitigation is a massive task with enormous costs. e role of economics will be to determine how to act in the least expensive, most cost-e ective way. He noted that economists consider GHG emissions an externality, an element that is outside the market mechanism. He advocated giving nancial incentives and disincentives to reduce GHGs—in other words, let the polluters pay. For sheries, many of the reductions in CO2 were market-based management reforms made in the interest of increasing e ciency, not speci cally to reduce GHGs. More changes will be needed, such as increasing fuel e ciency and nding a balance between net and trawling capture solutions. Many initiatives, such as low-carbon propulsion, are instigated in the shipping sector, which sheries can apply to mitigate their own impact on the climate.

In her presentation, Hildur Hauksdóttir, sustainability o cer at Fisheries Iceland, explained that Iceland’s shing industry has been and remains a main pillar of nationally prosperity and an important part of the culture, leading to a diversity of opinions about how such an important industry and the use of its natural resources should be regulated. In the 1980s, Icelandic sheries faced two problems: over shing and economic inef ciency, but these problems have been largely overcome. Iceland’s shing industry forecasts that, by 2030, it will achieve a 50 per cent reduction in carbon emissions, based on 2005 levels, and that it will be independent of fossil fuels by 2040. Total oil consumption in sheries has decreased 48 per cent from 1990 levels. In 1980, 90 to 100 workers were required to harvest 2400 tonnes of sh, but in 2016, it took eight workers to harvest 3200 tonnes. She credits the success to good shery management, consolidation in the capture shery industry, and investment in new vessels and equipment. With the implementation of the quota system in the 1980s, over shing decreased and stocks recovered, requiring less e ort to catch more sh.

Adding value is preferable to increasing catch volume

Energy consumed by Iceland’s sh processing plants has decreased 85 per cent since the 1980s. Soon, plants will be powered almost exclusively by renewable electricity. And when vessels are in port, they will also use renewable electricity. It is necessary, she said, to create an incentive for companies to innovate and utilise resources more e ciently. Rather than trying to increase catch, companies must nd solutions to create added value and get the most value out of each sh, with no waste. She noted the emergence of many new markets for products from the sea including medical products, food supplements, beauty products, and many more. William Anthony

PowerPoint presentations from the workshop are available on the Nordic Marine ink Tank website: https://www.nmtt.org/.