April 26, 2007

 

More marine species chosen and bred in aquaculture

 

 

The reduction in wild catch and the quest for more food is prompting more marine species to be domesticated for aquaculture, according to Prof. Duarte from the Spanish Council for Scientific Research.

 

Aquaculture is now emerging as a revolution in food production of global importance to humanity, Duarte said.

 

Almost 430 species have been domesticated since the start of the 20th century, 106 of them from the last decade.

 

Domestication has had higher success rates in the sea than it has on land species, said Dr Marianne Holmer, of the Institute of Biology, University of Southern Denmark, in a new research paper released in Science entitled 'Rapid Domestication on Marine Species'.

 

The main reason is that the need to choose suitable areas for livestock reduces the geographical range of domestication of land species, unlike the marine environment which has much fewer restrictions.

 

Another reason is that land domestication has drawn largely from the narrow range of mammals and birds, with few invertebrates. In contrast, a range of marine species - molluscs, crustaceans, vertebrates, echinoderms, jellyfish, worms have been domesticated.

 

More than 3000 marine species are used for food, compared to fewer than 200 land species.

 

This meant a potential fore more scope for expansion in aquaculture and explains the increase in more marine species being domesticated, Holmer said.

 

However, the rapid rise of aquaculture will fundamentally change the way people relate to the oceans, say scientists from the EU-funded Marine Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning (MarBEF) project.

 

Aquaculture production has been growing at rates of 7 to 8 percent a year, and is likely to become the main source of seafood in future as seafood demand continues to grow, the scientists said. 

 

However, there are serious environmental concerns, such as the deterioration of coastal ecosystems from run-off from aquaculture sites, and the impact it may have on wild species used as feed.

 

The scientists stressed that a sustainable production model that minimises environmental impact would need to be developed.