Aquaculture is the fastest growing food production sector in the world. Global aquaculture production reached 73.8 million tons in 2014, of which inland and marine aquaculture accounted for 47.1 million tons (64%) and 26.7 million tons (36%), respectively. Globally, fish provides over 3.1 billion people with 20% of their animal protein intake. Despite increase aquaculture production, the challenge of feeding is a growing global population which is expected to reach 9.9 billion by 2050. Because of increasing population, global food production will need to increase about 60% by 2050. In order to meet the demand for food from a growing global population, aquaculture production must be increased as the supply of fish from capture fisheries is stagnant. Sustainable yields from capture fisheries are needed to support aquaculture production for human consumption and aquaculture has the potential to supplement capture fisheries. Aquaculture offers the potential to reduce the vulnerability of global food supply. However, major challenges will face future aquaculture production within limited land and freshwater resources. The expansion of coastal aquaculture and mariculture could help release pressure on increasingly scarce freshwater resources used to produce food on land.
However, coastal and marine aquaculture are more vulnerable than inland freshwater aquaculture in terms of climate change. Coastal and marine aquaculture has been accompanied by recent concerns over changing environment. Different climatic variables, including coastal flooding, cyclones, global warming, ocean acidification, rainfall variation, salinity, sea level rise, sea surface temperature, and tidal surges could affect fish production from coastal and marine environment. Fish are highly sensitive to ecological conditions and changes in coastal and marine ecosystems could have severe effects on their survival, growth, and production. Changes in climatic conditions could have detrimental effects on fish reproduction, resulting in an overall loss of quality fry production. Parasite infestations and disease outbreaks in coastal and marine aquaculture could increase due to changes in environmental conditions because of increase transmission opportunity. Overall, the potential impacts of climate change on coastal aquaculture and mariculture could have severe consequences for future fish production. In addition, fish farming households in coastal communities are highly vulnerable to climate change due to high population density, poor socioeconomic conditions, and low adaptive capacity.
Considering vulnerability to the effects of climate change on coastal and marine aquaculture, adaptation strategies must be developed to cope with the challenges. It is likely that reducing the impacts of climate change on coastal and marine aquaculture will require a combination of adaptation strategies and policies. Addressing potential adaptation options and mitigation measures would help to increase resilience to climate change in coastal aquaculture and mariculture. A holistic adaptation planning may help to reduce the impacts of climate change on coastal and marine aquaculture. Community based adaptation strategies may also reduce the effects of climate change on coastal communities. The editors for this research topic welcome any of the article types accepted by Frontiers in Marine Science (e.g., original research, methods, hypothesis & theory, opinions, etc. You can find these article types
here. ) that address vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in coastal and marine aquaculture.
Muhammed Oyinlola (PhD student) is involved in editing this Research Topic under the supervision of the Topic Editors.