ECOLOGICAL AQUACULTURE FOR SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEMS

The Team & Research

Dominant models of production and consumption contribute to rapid biodiversity loss and environmental destabilization, from climate change to nutrient pollution of coastal waters, across the world. The research team at UCSC’s Kapuscinski-Sarker Lab Group embraces an ecological aquaculture approach to help shift aquaculture to a sustainability path, and flip problems into opportunities for socio-environmental benefits and innovation. Their research pursues opportunities to upcycle wastes into beneficial inputs, integrate aquaculture with agroecology, and assess the environmental and economic sustainability of alternative aquaculture feeds.

The team is examining ways that nutrient-rich water from recirculating fish tanks can be used on soil-grown crops in order to “close the loop” to improve nutrient use, reduce waste,  and conserve energy.

Research on microalgae-based, fish-free aquafeeds utilizes biomass left over after the extraction of oils for human supplements and other products. This biomass is a highly digestible, protein-rich, ingredient that could replace less sustainable ingredients such as fishmeal and soy meal. 

The team is developing an open-access decision-support tool for addressing critical knowledge gaps about environmental and economic sustainability of novel replacements for fishmeal and fish oil in aquafeeds. The tool allows users to assess if alternative aquafeed ingredients meet nutritional requirements and promote growth of the farmed organisms, ensure high quality of the final edible product, have low environmental impact, and compete with costs of conventional aquafeed ingredients. Inputs to the decision-support software include a meta-model database of: (1) life-cycle assessment data; (2) economic data; and (3) nutrition and growth performance data. A user-friendly interface will allow online users to select from a range of novel ingredients and provide data visualizations of the economic and environmental impacts. Learn more: presentation (PDF) (and presentation notes (PDF)) at a NOAA Sea Grant Symposium.

Blue Innovation Exhibit

At Blue Innovation, the research team will exhibit:

• Novel combinations of microalgae to produce ocean-friendly, fish-free and high performing
  aquaculture feeds.

• Circular economy reuse of aquaculture waste water to fertigate crops for integrated
  aquaculture-agriculture (more crop per drop of water)

• Interactive sustainable aquaculture feeds decision support tool -- open access software
  (aiming for public launch on the Internet in the fall).