Content area
Full Text
Environmental Management (2010) 45:953962 DOI 10.1007/s00267-010-9467-5
A Management Tool for Assessing Aquaculture Environmental Impacts in Chilean Patagonian Fjords: Integrating Hydrodynamic and Pellets Dispersion Models
Antonio Tironi Vctor H. Marin
Francisco J. Campuzano
Received: 9 September 2008 / Accepted: 2 February 2010 / Published online: 24 March 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
Abstract This article introduces a management tool for salmon farming, with a scope in the local sustainability of salmon aquaculture of the Aysen Fjord, Chilean Patagonia. Based on Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) principles, the tool combines a large 3-level nested hydrodynamic model, a particle tracking module and a GIS application into an assessment tool for particulate waste dispersal of salmon farming activities. The model offers an open source alternative to particulate waste modeling and evaluation, contributing with valuable information for local decision makers in the process of locating new facilities and monitoring stations.
Keywords Salmon farming Pollutant modeling
Particulate waste management Lagrangian models
Decision support system
Introduction
Contemporary human exploitation of world marine ecosystems appears to be unsustainable. Over 75% of the natural sh stocks are considered fully exploited or over-exploited (Food and Agricultural Organization 2007). Direct impacts over biodiversity, habitat destruction and waste disposal, along with climate change indirect effects -and a possible synergy between these factors- allow predicting the collapse of all harvested taxa by the year 2048, if we sustain todays trend of use and extraction (Harley and Hughes 2006; Worm and others 2006). On the other hand, sh consumption has duplicated since 1960 and now its the fastest growing food industry worldwide (Food and Agricultural Organization 2007). In this context, sh farming responsible for more than 70% of this growthappears as a proper way to reduce human pressure over world sh stocks. However, carnivorous species farming (e.g. salmon, trout) requires large food inputs, producing a series of local impacts on marine ecosystems, converting them in a mixed blessing for world sheries. On the negative side, some aquacultures, including salmon farming, raises the demand for some pelagic sh species (e.g., Chilean mackerel) used for sh oil and our (Naylor and Burke 2005; Naylor and others 2003; Naylor and others 2000).
In general terms, the marine phase of the salmon farming productive cycle consist of an accelerated and controlled growth...