Approaches to tackle emerging challenges in European aquaculture

The word demand for fish is increasing. Whilst on one hand, fishing is carried out in a not sustainable ways in the main fishing areas (e.g., overexploitation of natural stocks, remarkable fuel and energy consumption), on the other hand, acquaculture, above all when not performed inland, involves environmental concerns related to the emissions of pollutants in the sea, low resourse efficiency and the high consumption of chemicals. Thus, acquaculture should aim to reduce its environemental impact and to produced fish and seafood in a circular economy perspective. This contribution focuses on different approaches to tackle two environmental issues related to aquaculture in Europe: 1) the reduction of impact due to aquaculture farming of edible species and 2) the improvement of the farming of a cleaner fish species to reduce the overexploitation of natural stocks and to solve the dramatic problem of sealice in Atlantic salmon farming. The first approach aims at developing self-sufficient multi-trophic systems for inland aquaculture in Mediterranean areas. The second approach aims at optimizing the farming of the lumpfish that is used in sea net pen as a killer of salmon sealice. The description of the planned approaches and preliminary results of the SIMTAP (Self-sufficient Integrated Multi-Trophic AquaPonic) project and lumpfish aquaculture, including future challenges and research directions, are reported.