Fish Cages - Image Courtesy Department of Fisheries
The aquaculture industry generally acknowledges the importance of production remaining within the assimilative or environmental carrying capacity of the environment; however, the definition of carrying capacity can be difficult and often leads to conflict between the industry, regulators and non-government organisations. Consensus is often difficult because of, among other reasons, a lack of accurate information, fixed points of view and inaccurate assumptions.
In part, the problem is the difficulty of knowing what the impacts will actually be. As a result, the legal and regulatory systems used to manage marine ecosystems have often been reactive rather than proactive and unnecessarily complicated.
The progressive globalisation of the world’s economy has resulted in an increasingly complex business environment and capital market flows. In this environment, higher levels of certainty in approvals and secure tenure will be an essential prerequisite for aquaculture if the industry is to grow and attract significant capital investment. A key element of those processes relating to environmental approvals is not a series of figures and tables that can only be understood by a trained scientist but a clear description in plain language of the facts relevant to and that will be taken into account for planning and permitting or licensing decisions. Complex models are certainly useful to predict the impacts of aquaculture; however, they are of little use unless their results are acceptable to the relevant approving agency and can expressed in terms that stakeholders understand and accept. Models that can achieve those objectives can be used as part of a management and decision support system that can provide the level certainty required by investors, industry, regulators and stakeholders.
